


Someplace Like Bolivia

by MonoclePony



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Angst, Bandits & Outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid AU, Last of their kind feeling, M/M, Male Bonding, Minor Character Deaths, Mutual Pining, POV Jean Kirstein, Ymir/Historia - Freeform, horse death (be prepared), horse trauma, in period attitudes, mild race attitudes, mild violence, train robbers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 23:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 68,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonoclePony/pseuds/MonoclePony
Summary: "Kid, the next time I say, "Let's go someplace like Bolivia," let's go someplace like Bolivia."- Paul Newman (Butch), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance KidJean Kirschtein was born from the dust, a Pennsylvanian boy without a penny to his name and a wandering spirit. Having long idolised the outlaws who galloped through his dimestore novels, he chooses to seek out adventure and fortune out West. Little does he know that he is setting in motion the events that will make him become one of the most renowned and infamous bandits of the century; a member of the legendary Wild Bunch, led by a man who leads Jean to question his beliefs, his morals and his heart.But the days of the West are coming to a close; can he and Marco Bodt, a man famous for being one of the most successful bank robbers of the territory without ever firing a gun, shake loose the Pinkertons, the posses, and the ever-present threat of a modern age that wants them banished to the history books?This is Jean's story, told in his own words - and the heart of an outlaw.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So, this has been a long time coming. 
> 
> It's taken a very long time, with plenty of research to be done too, but it's here! This is my JeanMarco Western AU, an AU I've been wanting to write for an extremely long time and got a great chunk of it done during 2017's NaNoWriMo challenge. I've put a lot of heart into this, and tried to remain as faithful as possible to the actual story of Butch Cassidy and Sundance (for your reference, Jean is the part of Sundance and Marco the part of Butch in this fic - though that's obvious later on). I fell in love with this group of people whilst researching, and I only hope that you can fall in love with this Jean and this Marco as much as I have. 
> 
> If you liked this, please leave a comment! I would appreciate that so much, as it really keeps me motivated ;___; 
> 
> As ever, I can be found on tumblr here: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com or on Twitter @purple_tealeaf, if you'd like to ask any questions!

**_November – 1908._ **

I never should've been surprised that my life would end with a gun pointed at my face.  
  
It’s a Colt, of all guns I suppose it had to be. It’s a gun that starts fights and finishes ‘em too. Army issue, this, the sort of weapon given to officers to take down charging horses or shoot Natives straight through the head. It’s a gun I know well – after all, it’s mine. And it’s in the hand of a man I’d entrust with my life. Only seems proper that it’s his duty to end it.  
  
Men like us, the dime-store novels say, don't like dying in their bed - not like the normal folk. We want out in a blaze of glory, in some heroic final shootout that drags other souls with us down to whatever judgement we got waiting. Guess that's where the two of us and the men in the books differ. We ain't the sort of men who face death with a defiant laugh and a curse at the sky.

With the sound of men outside and bullets flying through the air, we’re scared.

We’re so goddamned scared.  
  
Truth is, I don’t want to die; not here, in a shack in the middle of nowhere. Not by the hand that holds the gun so steady, 'spite the bullet wound in his shoulder and the wild, trapped look in his eyes. See, he ain’t doin' this for the hell of it – he’s doing it for mercy.

Mercy’s a word I never thought I'd use for the likes of him.

Neither’s 'Good'.

Neither’s 'Lover'.

Neither’s 'Friend.'  
  
My life was never supposed to end this way. I was never meant to leave my hometown, was meant to work there til I died, but life don't often work out the way you might expect. It twists and turns like tumbleweed, not knowing where it's headed 'til it gets there. Of all lives, mine is one full of surprises.

Sundance was a surprise.

He was a surprise.

Bolivia was a surprise.  
  
I was never one for surprises, before I met him; now I wish they would come more often. Maybe one could turn things inside out and back to front and we could get away.

When the only remaining thing you care about is threatening to kill you, it's easy to imagine your life splintering into pieces. Don't matter if it's mercy. Don't matter if you're scared. No mercy or fear’s gonna stick no pieces back together.

Do I regret? Sure. I have regrets. But none of ‘em belong where I tread; they don’t have no place on the mesas, the range, the canyons. Send them to the towns, to civilisation, smart and richly dressed, cus this sure as hell ain’t no civil place.

Oh God, I’m gonna die in an uncivil land, by an uncivil man. And I won’t be asking him to stop.

Blood’s clogging my shirt where the first bullet went in; that happened a half hour ago, I reckon, but the wound in my leg is far more recent. It ain’t spraying blood in a fountain the way I seen mortal wounds do, so I suppose I’m doing just fine if it would quit giving me hell.

I was screaming – getting shot does that to you – but I shut up once I saw my Colt in his hand. Once I saw the hard look in his eyes, heard the quaking in his breath. Now all we are is silent.

I look at the gun, then at him, then at the gun again. I wonder if he’ll do it. He’s threatened so many times. It’s our trademark, see; I get smart with him, he threatens to shoot me. Once the barbs smoothed out, it became something of a joke between us. Now I don’t see no humour in his eyes. I wonder if, after all this time, he’s gonna prove me right from all those years ago and be the killer I thought he was.

The shots that ricochet off the walls of that godforsaken house don’t sound like nothing no more. All I see is him. All I see is the gun.

“Don’t,” I say.

It’s not a command. I could never command the likes of him. It brings something back though, something remembered in those eyes of his. Maybe it was the wobble in my voice that I tried so hard to keep to myself. He don’t like fear; he pushes it down whenever he can, pushes and pushes til he’s stood on it. I reach out and try to touch his shoulder, his hand, anything – but he moves back, shaking his head like a dog knowing it’s doing something it shouldn’t, and makes a soft hiccoughing noise in his chest.

Don’t cry.

Oh God, don’t cry.

He wets his lips, cracked from the heat of the South American sun, and looks at me proper. Those are the eyes I look into whenever I need to be calm. They’re the rocks, left for my temper to crash against like waves. The hardness is gone, just for a little while, and I wish I could hold onto this. Maybe if this is the last thing I see, it’ll be alright.

He sighs, a sound like an earthquake. “It’s… it’s time for you to go, Colt,” he said, strong and sure as he always was.

I went many places in my life. I left as soon as arrived, sometimes. I could never settle in one place, always moving on, always pushing. But right now, I don’t wanna go anywhere. He ain’t giving me much of a choice, and neither’s the blood pooling around me like some sorta target.

_Mercy,_ I remind myself. _Not murder. It’s mercy._

Everything’s led to this. The robberies, the gang, the money, the women, the gambling. The laboured breaths of the horses. The tumultuous roar of hooves in a getaway. The gentlest sighs of a man undone. All of the moments, those precious forevers, tumbling together and sticking me in the gut, make me realise that no matter what I did it was going to end here, in Bolivia, with the man I…

But I ain’t talking right. I been thinking a lot lately about life and death and the bits in between. Call it philosophy; I ain’t no scholar but I know when a man’s done good in his life and got a bad lot in it for his trouble. I know the way a story can get crumpled up and tossed aside like a bit of paper and rewritten the way the enemy likes it. I read the papers. I see the posters. I see us, the monsters – not us, the men. It’s why we ran here in the first place – and look what good it did us.

He rests the gun muzzle to my head. He’s trying to scare me, but it’s five years too late. I close my eyes and take it in, let the cold metal seep into my skin and through to my bones. The numbness in my leg, the pounding pain in my arm, I ignore. I grit my teeth and lean in closer, pressing that cruel muzzle so close it starts to cut.

“Colt, please, you have to-”

“Do it,” I say. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

I hear his hitch of breath, the safety catch flick. “You know I don’t wanna do this,” he says, a voice so cold that was once so warm. Maybe he’s died already.

“I know,” I assure him, and in the midst of the shouts, the gunfire, the hole in my arm, I lean as close as he’ll let me. His grip on the gun falters. I kiss him. Just once. Just soft. But enough. A kiss between monsters, without a story to tell if the papers would be believed.

No, I think as my Colt gives its resounding shot, our story is hidden in pages; the pages which, conveniently enough, are stuffed in the saddlebags of my horse.

 


	2. Act 1, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, chapter one! :D The proper beast! Here we have Jean relating his childhood, and the moment he decides that it's time for a change...
> 
> Also, thank you so much for your glowing feedback; I'm already so touched by the amount of love I'm getting from people about this fic, it's surprised me in a really wonderful way and I am just...so happy ;3; no matter how much thanks I give it wouldn't ever be enough <3 
> 
> As always, please comment if you enjoy this chapter - you can find me in the following places if you wanna ask questions about the fic, or anything really:   
> Tumblr: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @purple_tealeaf

_3 months earlier._

I don’t know where to begin.

I’m sure you heard that one before – I don’t pretend to be a poet, or some kind of literary genius, but the beginning of the tale is never quite as interesting as the end of one. But this morning I got up, I washed my face and towelled my hair, and I bought some paper at the local store. I came back, sat down, and began to write. And, well, I screwed up more pages than I’ve kept but I hope that this, at some point, makes some sense to some people. I don’t know who’ll read this, or who’ll even care – but it’s on paper, and that makes it real. Sometimes, that’s what I need to remind myself that this life I’m living ain’t one of those stories they tell around campfires.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. My name is Jean Kirschtein, better known in some circles as Colt. I’m 32 years old, and I am a train robber, bank robber, horse thief and cattle rustler. I was part of the outlaw gang known as The Wild Bunch. I have never killed a man, but I have loved one.

All of the people in this story, more or less, are dead now. By the time somebody reads this, I could be riding down that same dark track. For now I am alive, and I am writing. The men and women in these pages were my friends. They were my brothers. They were my family, at a time where I had none. I guess that makes me pretty empty now, don’t it?

Well. Except for Marco. But he ain’t here forever.

I suppose the best kind of beginning is a proper one. I wasn’t born to this life, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me this is where I was headed.

I was born in 1877 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, in half a duplex on the lip of the Schuykill Canal. I was born screaming, my Pa said, and joked that it was the only time I ever did when I was at home.

I was the youngest of five. That made things a busy, cramped household; it was all of us over half a house, and all of us rowdy and boisterous. Maybe that was why I never found a point in speaking all that much. Ma told me I never spoke til the age of five, and even then it were sparing. Like a bird knows to sing, I knew to keep quiet. It weren’t beaten into me, or even asked of me. I just _did_. Guess the world pressed that little bit tighter around me, the way it sometimes does now, and I thought it best not to talk back to it.

My father never held down a steady job due to a dangerous bout of pride that, it’s said, was passed to me. My mother, devout in her faith as she was, stood by him when better women would have left. They both believed in God and hard work, and I was raised believing the selfsame thing.

The domestic part of my early life I don’t remember all that much; blurs of moth-eaten carpets and peeling wallpaper are all I have to clutch at from the houses in Phoenixville. My Ma treated me kind and my Pa, when he was home, weren’t the sort to use his fists to settle an argument. People came and went like fireflies, darting into my life for short bursts before flying away again, back into the depths of wherever they came from. Besides, I didn’t take much stock in people.

What I remember is the canal.

My uncle Michael ran a boat along that stretch of water; I didn’t know at the time, being young and only telling adults apart from the cut of their trousers and the look of their knees. I didn’t know that my Da and he had discussed my wages and hours before I could even walk. To me, back then, it was simply the canal, and a myth all its own.

It ran for 100 miles or more, its thick grey body squeezing its way between our coal-blackened houses. The water there ran fast oftentimes so we weren’t allowed to swim in it, though boys from the neighbourhood swore they had. It was deep, too – it was murky with mud and waste from the factories, and held a lot of secrets that were probably better off left in those depths. On the right sorta mornings, there’d be a haze cast over the surface of the water and the current would slow, as if to take a breath. Those were my favourite kinds of mornings.

I would sit on our back step those days, looking out at the haze and watching the cigar-shaped boats sliding past our door, pulled by teams of skinny mules. On those boats could be many number of things: coal from the mines, cattle feed for the herds out West, all of it sailed down that channel. But it weren’t the canal boats that interested me – it was the people on them. The boats, often than not, were filled with families, the like of which I had never seen before. I knew the dusty grey people of my city well; they were nothing but nameless suits and dresses, flitting through the streets like dandelion seeds. The canal boat families were very, very different. They were loud and rude and bright, and I was fascinated by them. The children were particularly intriguing to my young mind.

They often sat on the stock their parents were bringing into the town, crowing like birds and aiming stones at the boys leading the mules on the riverbank. Sometimes the stones would miss and hit the mules, and to the delight of the imps on board those boats the animals would stop dead, sit on their haunches and refuse to move.

The canal children, Ma said, were the feral kind. She would lay a hand on my shoulder and steer me back into the house whenever she caught me watching them. Funny – she may have been scrabbling in her pockets for coin all the livelong day, but she still thought us above the canal people. Guess everyone has to feel above somebody to cope with how dirt poor they feel.

When the time came, I knew it was for the best. Ma wanted me out of the way, and I wanted to do my bit for the house. I might’ve been young, but I knew what poor was, and I knew we was exactly that. I didn’t get the smart toys or the neat clothes some children got; I got hand-me-downs and repaired things, just another Kirschtein along the factory line. I didn’t mind it none – when a kid don’t know no better, he just assumes it’s the way of things – and when my Pa told me I was to start helping out, I did my best to look excited.

Anyways, I was grateful, when it came to it, for the job bestowed upon me. It made me feel important, made me feel like I was part of the family the way my older brothers and sisters were, and not some burden to be coddled and protected.

The next sibling in age to me was Samanna, my sister, who was a constant source of noise and prodding. As she was of working age and I was the mature type (according to Ma), we started on the canals the same time. It weren’t usually the place for a girl, but Samanna held her own as well as any boy and I needed as much help as I could get. We couldn’t be more like chalk and cheese; Samanna was three years my senior, pretty and tall with dark hair like Pa’s and a voice that carried for miles. I was small, mousey like Ma and looked instead of touched. I could hide behind my big sister, with her bossy shouts and swinging hips, and nobody would bother me. If you looked at us and got asked who would become the outlaw, I sure as hell wouldn’t be the one you chose. Guess that’s part of the charm.

The days were long and arduous; we worked eighteen hours, walking a little over 25 miles there and back along the serpentine track, driving a mule with limitless energy. The first day saw me limping back sore and tired and wanting to cry, but I refused to let it show. I was pig-headed, even then.

I was six years old when I first learnt how to drive a mule. They’re a cantankerous animal, and know how to bite when they’re upset. Though they are a stubborn and bad-tempered creature, they attack any job given to them with a fierceness that rivals their moods. I’ll admit, looking back now, putting a child in charge of a mule ain’t the best of ideas, but that was the way of things in Phoenixville.

There were three of them in our team, all taller than me and black as the coals that were mined from the hills. They would stand in a row like living statues, snorting through their noses like small locomotives and shaking their heads to rid their overlarge ears of midges. I adored them immediately, the way all small children love something that’s easily capable of killing ‘em. Thankfully, these mules didn’t have no bad bones in their bodies, stubborn as they were, and allowed me to tug on their ears and pull their tails as much as I liked. I was shown how to harness them once by my uncle, and that was all the showing I needed.

My favourite part of the job was the early morning, when I would slip into the stables at the crack of dawn and get the mules ready for the gruelling day ahead. Leading out that snorting, steady engine of a beast made me more than a boy made of pig iron and charcoal – it gave me the calm, comforting reassurance that I had a place in this grey, misty world. We would melt into the early morning haze, me and those mules and Samanna up in front, and we would begin our days that wouldn’t end until the sun went down.

Once the mule was hitched, she would pull, and I was the one who urged her forward and made sure she didn’t run the boat aground. The creaking of the leathers and the jingling of the brass were all I could hear in those morning times. But then Samanna would start whistling up ahead, a different tune every week, and it would remind me that there was more than just me and the mule I drove. Samanna didn’t take to it quite as well. She preferred waving at the canal boys on the barges and singing songs rather than do any real work. I, as always, stayed quiet, and my mule stayed pulling.

I did more than drive the mule. I didn’t treat her like an engine, a nameless thing with no flesh or bone; she was a business partner, an animal who shared my fate of being born someplace she didn’t know or rightly understand. We were both working. We were both waiting for the time when we could stop and go back to our beds. We was both a little different, her with her lineage and me with my silence. She weren’t the judging type, and I sure as hell weren’t the beating type, so we got along well.

At the end of the day when we were both tuckered out and wanting nothing more than the supper at the end of the trail, I would sometimes lead the mule over to a tree stump or large rock and use it as a stepping stone, swinging my leg over her back and giving her a gentle nudge with my knees. She didn’t care none; she just ambled back to the barn, despite the light having been snuffed out long ago. She was smart. She knew how to get home. I would sit atop her back and pretend to be a grand emperor returning from battle, or a knight on his way to fight a dragon. I fell off plenty, but that didn’t stop me.

The children from the boats would sometimes come ashore and walk with Samanna and I at night, girls with their hair all loose and unkempt and the boys with missing teeth and impish grins. I wondered what I looked like to them, this scruffy boy with eyes that looked for the monsters in the river and with a hand buried in the bristly mane of my charge. But the children took a shine to me nonetheless, and would often sneak me biscuits or small pots of sugar under the cover of night. The boys snuck kisses to Samanna, though she swore me never to tell. I never did tell any of it to Ma – I knew what would happen. She would find some reason for me not to work anymore and that would be the end of that. I had a feeling it was to do with Samanna, and her waving. Maybe the canal boys’ gifts of kisses too.

It didn’t matter much to Ma, in the end. By the time I was twelve, she wore down Pa enough that I left the canal behind and went to work as a hired servant for a family on the outskirts of town. The canals had shaped me into someone that weren’t usual for a servant. I was a wiry, scrawny kid, with a growth spurt that wasn’t quite done with me and hair that hung in my face no matter how hard I blew it. I was, also, still maddeningly mute. Samanna blamed the canal children. Ma blamed Pa.

When I arrived dressed in my Sunday best to be ‘appraised’, it felt more like I was some bullock for sale. The lady of the house was especially critical.

“He looks weedy,” she complained to her husband, as I stood there feeling like an especially dark smudge on her carpet. “I can’t imagine him having a good manner about a household. And he slouches too, look at the curvature of the spine. Gosh, he doesn’t have rickets, does he?”

I let my eyes drop to the carpet and wondered if I could burn a hole in the hem of the hateful woman’s dress just by looking hard enough.

Her husband was a kinder sort. “Come dear, I told the boy’s father we had a job for him and a job for him I shall find. If you don’t want him in the house, he can help work the land with me.” He leant down to my level, the only adult to do that who wasn’t a relation, and said with a smile, “Tell me, boy, what are you good at?”

I stiffened. Being spoken to like this had not been part of Ma’s pep talk, and already I was floundering for something to say. Nothing came to mind, no matter how furiously I thought. I wanted to tell him about the canals, about walking all day for miles until my feet were sore and I was ready to collapse, but the words didn’t come. I thought of the mules, and my resolve hardened.

When I finally levelled my gaze at my future employer, I had to take a breath before I spoke. “I like horses.” It was the first three words I’d spoken to someone who wasn’t my family.

The man’s eyebrow cocked with amusement. “Horses, you say? Well, that’s a good start. Do you ride?”

I swallowed painfully. “No, sir. Ridden afore, but ain’t very good.” The words seemed to form like rocks in my mouth, just to be spat out. My accent did the butchering for me. I ignored the lady’s nose wrinkling beside her delighted husband.

His name, it turned out, was Hannes, and he gave me the foundation of a life I was soon to be an expert in. He raised crops and horses to sell at market and showed me the right way to ride that wouldn’t have me sliding off every five minutes, and the way to approach a nervous horse to show I meant no harm. He taught me how to till the soil, showed me when the best season was for which plants, and sometimes gave me some of the extra stock to take home for the table.

The best part of the job, by far, was the horses. Hannes bred the kinds that young ladies or gentlemen would buy; dainty, pretty little things that were a far cry from the chunky, no nonsense beasts of burden I was used to. I would watch them in their pens, nipping each other and squealing like spoilt children until they were taken out to be trotted up and down for a prospective buyer. When I was sure Hannes and his wife were out, I would hop the fence and try to ride.

I would have to rope one of them to get on its back, but after a bit of fussing they tended to stand quiet for me – long enough to mount, at least. Walking around and around the pen on one of the horses, the others parting for us like a sea, had my mind travelling to other places. The muscle moving under me promised a power the like of which I hadn’t felt with the mules.

I’ve never felt braver than I do on the back of a horse. Walking around that paddock with nothing but a rope around the horse’s neck and a hand in its mane, I knew I never wanted to be without one. This thought gave way to daydreaming, and those became dangerous things.

I believe the sole blame for my life, however, is the library card I purchased with my first wage. I’d been eyeing up the place for a while now, since I had started learning to read in the Sunday school I attended after church services. We had read parts of the Bible together, but I had read ahead and got punished for doing so, and so Ma had given me some books from the house to read instead. I swallowed every word, and so quickly that I was fast running out of new stories. Samanna would sometimes let me borrow hers, but only for a few days as she always regretted it and stole them back whilst I wasn’t looking.

Walking into the library with its endless towers of books felt like walking into my own place of worship, and the $1 card was the only thing standing in my way. With what precious time I had that wasn’t spent working for Hannes or attending Church with my family, I would take roost in the snuggest corner of the library with a small pile of books beside me. I sometimes took them home – often not, as we moved a lot and I didn’t wanna risk losing ‘em along the way – but when I did, I kept them out of sight. I was sure Ma wouldn’t approve of exactly what I was reading about.

You see, I was reading about the West.

There were plenty of books out there about it, dimestore novels that were spine-broke and with pages missing, but I inhaled those stories like air. Fact was, I was a poor boy from Pennsylvania with nothing but a roof over my head that didn’t belong to me and a job that weren’t my own neither, and reading gave me the opportunity to open a door and step through it, if only for a little while. The stories enchanted me; stories of Cowboys and Indians, of saving pretty ladies from train tracks and hunting the great Buffalo of the plains. The James Brothers, Buffalo Bill, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, all of them ran through the pages of the novels I devoured. Some were dead by then, others alive still, but all were able to take the imagination of a boy with nothing and turn it into a dream that galloped through his mind as he slept. The West seemed like a magical place to me, a place of fantasy with adventure and danger that there wasn’t in Phoenixville. And I loved every moment of those books.

“Whatcha got there?” Samanna said, when we were all sat around the table, one week in winter.

I looked up from the page I’d been studying, and frowned. I’d been at Hannes’ the whole day fixing a fence and hadn’t had the time to finish a chapter of mine. I’d left the story on a cliffhanger the day before, and it was eating away at my guts. I’d thought it was safe to sneak it to the dinner table – people often forgot I was there – but today, it seemed, I was wrong. “Nothin’,” I mumbled, and dived back in.

“Come _on_ ,” Samanna whined, “ain’t like you to keep secrets.”

One of my older brothers, Alec, smirked. “Ain’t one of those pictures of girls, is it?”

I flushed bright red. “No,” I retorted, but it was too late. Ma had heard.

“Jean Kirschtein, turn out your pockets,” she barked down the table.

“Ain’t in my pockets,” I muttered.

“Young man, do as I say.”

I sighed, bidding a silent farewell to my library card, as I placed the book I’d been hiding on my lap onto the crumb-strewn table. My siblings goggled at it. “Where’d you get that?” one of my sisters asked, wrinkling her nose as she stared down at it.

I hesitated. Lying wouldn’t work, not with Ma. “Library.”

“And what,” Ma interjected, “were you doin’ there?”

I blinked. “Reading. Usually what happens in a library.”

I hadn’t meant to be rude, but my comment sent sniggers down the length of the table. “Okay, smart alec,” Ma said, “where’d you get the money for that?”

I stiffened. “I paid for the card out my own pocket,” I defended. “It was only a dollar, Ma, I swear.”

She put up a hand in a placating gesture, and I faltered. “Don’t have to say nothing. Don’t you worry, Jeanbo. Just nice to see that one of us around here would like to better himself.” She stood up from her seat and wandered down to my place, every footstep another nail driven deep into the coffin of my reading freedom. When she reached my book and picked it up, a frown crossed her face as she read the title.

“What is it, Ma?” Alec asked. “Is it a saucy book?” His grin widened. “Does it have _ladies_ in it?”

“Shut up!” I hissed.

Thankfully, this one didn’t – some of them, I’d found, did, and I was hoping against hope that there weren’t any in future chapters. Ma flicked through it, pursing her lips, and when she set it down on the table again she muttered, “Well, it ain’t filth o’ _that_ kind but it certainly ain’t savoury. What you wanna go reading about men like that for, Jean?”

I shrugged. “Interesting,” was all I got out.

“‘ _The James’ Boys’ Great Escape’_ ,” Samanna read. She frowned. “Why you reading about criminals? Ain’t gonna run off and join their gang are you?”

That caused a laugh around the table. I didn’t find it funny. “They give their money to the poor, to the folk the rich people are cruel to. Dunno if that makes ‘em criminals, if they do something nice like that.”

The table went quiet. I weren’t in the business of mincing words or talking more than I had to, and I’d just said two whole sentences without stopping. Ma recovered quickest. “Of course it does, Jeanbo, they killed people to get that money.” She patted me on the shoulder the way she always did when I was saying something she didn’t agree with. “No matter what they did with that money after, they still killed a person. One good deed don’t absolve ‘em of doing a bad one. It all counts in heaven.”

It all counts in heaven. Lord, if my Ma could’ve said anything that stuck with me all these years, that would be it. I know I’m destined for Hell. I know that now. Back then, though, I just nodded and ate my supper and took the book back the moment I could. Turns out the James boys did escape in the end, if you wanted to know.

Ma’s acceptance of my hobby meant that I could bring more books back to the house if I wanted; we were by this point in a single room in a big house in the centre of town, much closer to Hannes’ land than we used to be but far more cramped than before too. It meant that my wings were feeling more and more like they were being clipped, the four walls more like a cage than a home. I started craving the times when I was out of that house and in the library, or at Hannes’ place. I took to bringing books with me wherever I went, tucked in a bag I slung over my shoulder. I’d read them at lunchtime, or when we had a quieter time of it in the fields. I knew Hannes had noticed, and also knew it was only a matter of time before he asked.

I didn’t have to wait long. A week later I was sat drinking bitter coffee outside the porch, book open on my knees, when Hannes’ voice behind me made me jump. “Never had you down as a reader. Should’ve known, though. The quiet ones like their books.”

I blinked owlishly at him, wondering what on earth was gonna happen now. Was I gonna be fired for reading? Was that too much intelligence for a farmhand on a pittance? Instead, Hannes just laughed and shook his head, and sat down next to me. I shut the book and left it on the porch. He offered me a sip from his canteen, something that I thought about before accepting. Sure enough, the liquid that burnt down my throat definitely weren’t water, and I was spluttering my way through an explanation when Hannes stopped me. “S’alright. Boys like you, you’re thinkers. It’s a good way to be, thinkers. You’ll go far.”

“It’s just a b-book,” I mumbled, stumbling under the weight of my modesty, “it don’t mean nothing that I can read it.”

“Why, sure it does. Means you think about the bigger picture. Aren’t many who do that around here.” Hannes offered me a grin. “You wanna go West, don’t you?”

I don’t know how he knew. Maybe it was obvious, though I’d tried so hard to be careful with my enthusiasm. I’d kept it pocketed when Ma was around, even more so when I got to see Pa, but I had been looking at trains for the better part of a month. Phoenixville, with all its canals and factories and civilised streets, had done its duty for me. It had brought me up silent, in a world where coughing out factory smoke and toiling endlessly for little reward was what constituted a good life. Well, I for one was ready to disagree. I wanted to go to the West and be a cowboy, and that was something that was so within my reach, it was mocking. I turned my face away and looked down to the pens. “The horses need bringing in, sir. We should get to it.”

“Don’t you worry. I won’t tell the missus if you don’t.” He tipped me a wink that made me smile, and suddenly I knew that Hannes weren’t the person to be feared. “The West is a good place for a young lad like you,” he said, surprising me. “I mean, I’d be sorry to see the back of you, but it got plenty of opportunity from those who want it. You’ll work damn hard down there, damn hard – but you could get yourself a tidy little homestead out there, raise horses like I do or a head of cattle maybe. Plus, there’s silver being found in the mountains. Might even go and make yourself rich.”

His words were filling me with a hope I scarcely dared to let in. Seems childish now, but back then I wanted to find some of the adventure the books talked about, get myself a job as a cowboy and travel the land as I pleased, herding cattle and roping strays. There were plenty of boys in the town who wanted to do it too, but at that moment I thought that none of them wished as hard as I did.

“I can’t just leave,” I said, dampening my own bright spark of hope. “I can’t leave Ma on her own. And Pa would come chasing after me if he ever knew.”

Hannes nodded in understanding. “Well, that’s something I can’t help with. But if you ever need your wage a little early, all you gotta do is ask.”

I appreciated that, from a man who didn’t owe me nothing. It was an act of kindness I probably took for granted back then, and I wish I’d have been a little more grateful.

Though I hadn’t mentioned anything to my parents or my siblings, fate turned its face to me and brought me an opportunity, on the back of one of my uncle’s visits.

Uncle Michael visited when he could. He said it was to keep an eye on Pa and make sure he was staying out of trouble. We all knew that Pa was no hell-raiser, but his pride and stubbornness often got the better of him and started many a fight he couldn’t hope to finish. Uncle had some sorta obligation to look after him, being the oldest of the two, and I think my Grandma’s vengeful spirit definitely rested on his soul every time he considered leaving Pa to it. Besides, he liked our family; his had all but grown up, and he liked having youngsters around.

The day he chose to visit, there weren’t many of us to greet him; Samanna was out courting the next Poor Young Man who’d come her way, and Alec had got himself a job in a big house as a servant. That left me, Ma, Pa and two of my older siblings, Elwood and Emma, neither of which paid me much attention. When Uncle arrived and set down his coat and hat in my waiting arms, Pa already had words to share with him.

I retreated to the kitchen to help Ma cut the vegetables, elbowing my way past Elwood despite his protests. Ma smiled and handed me a carrot. “You know, your Uncle has some exciting news,” she said as she peeled, which got my curiosity stirring. “He’s got in touch with a cousin of yours. Says he got a ranch out in Colorado, just started up.”

I wondered if Ma had noticed the way I’d almost cut my thumb off at hearing that. “He looking for people?” I asked, trying not to sound as excited as I felt.

“Why, I suppose he must be. Places like that are always looking for the next cowpoke to go bumbling into town.” Ma glanced at me with an edge of suspicion to her mouth. “Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “Makin’ conversation.”

“Uh huh.” She continued to peel for a few minutes more, our small pile of vegetables quickly becoming a mountain range, before she stopped me and tipped them into a stew pot hanging over the fire. “Jeanbo, you’re a good boy and that makes you a terrible liar. What’s this about? I thought you was happy working for those nice people up the hill.”

I sighed. I knew it was to come out sooner or later. It ended up appearing in a rush. “I don’t mind the work but it don’t mean I’m happy.” I kept my gaze fixed on the parsnip I was in the process of chopping. “I wanna go West, Ma. Hannes says there’s jobs out there for boys like me.”

“What, green-horned little gremlins who think they’ll go out there and make their fortune? Sure,” she snorted, “I bet there’s plenty of jobs for you.”

I sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand, you’re just my Ma.”

“I had dreams once too, Jeanbo.” She took the parsnip from me before I chopped it to dust, and offered a weak smile. “But dreams go astray. I don’t want you goin’ out there and losing your mind in those dustbowls and saloons.”

In honesty, I’d thought of it. The part of my mind that weren’t pinked over with thinking how romantic it’d be if I became a cowboy in the Wild West had got itself thinking. Maybe I got myself a girl and lived out my days roping cattle and chasing down outlaws. Maybe I didn’t. What if I failed? What if, after wanting it for so long, I weren’t good enough?

I turned my back on the kitchen and looked back at the room we’d made our own, the table in the middle of it standing on an angle where one leg was shorter than the other. Pa was talking to Uncle Michael about something important, cus he was taking him over into a corner and whispering too loud. Elwood and Emma were arguing over who got the good crockery and complaining about Samanna getting the best of it when she weren’t even here to choose. It was a life I’d lived for thirteen years, and the hell with it. I wanted out, while I still had the chance.

I tried a different tactic. “Well, say I get a job with this cousin of ours. If I got a job to go out there to. Would you let me go then?”

Ma gave me another of those sidelong glances, the ones I was used to as a child. I knew that she was sizing me up, wondering if what I said was serious or if I was just saying it to be stubborn. I hoped she found what she was looking for – I often wonder what I’d have done if she hadn’t – but she sighed and turned away. “If I say no, you’ll go anyway. Won’t you?”

She said it so small and meek I weren’t even sure I heard her at first. I wanted to tell her no, of course I wouldn’t, but then I thought back to my quiet studies of the train times and Hannes’ offering of an early wage packet, and knew it weren’t the truth. And, like she said, I weren’t one for being a good liar. That, I assure you, came much later.

My silence seemed to answer for me, which I was thankful for – I don’t think I could have said it out loud. Ma laughed, a small, shaky sound, and said, “Wow, your Pa was right. You ain’t for this way of life, are you?”

“You been talking about me?” I never knew she and Pa talked about me. I was the child they didn’t have to worry about, the one who stayed in his corner and didn’t go gambling or smoking or taking drinks in the saloons. I was the safe one, the sensible one. I made it that way, knowing they worried about Alec and Samanna and everyone else. “What for? Who has?”

“Just Pa. Saying that you ain’t destined for a life here, that your heart’s asking for something bigger.” She weren’t looking at me on purpose, I knew she weren’t, for the pot was boiling and she weren’t adding no vegetables to it. “I thought it might take a little more time for you to want to step out on your own, I never thought it would be so soon… and so _young…_ ”

“Ma, I ain’t going with just anyone, I’d be going with family.”

“I know that, but it don’t make it any less harder.”

Guilt, for the first time, buried its way into my chest. It dug down deep and lay there, squeezing my chest with every breath. Ma was defeated before I even argued my case. She didn’t back down to no one, not normally, which made me think that maybe she knew it was for the best, too. I pushed off from the top, away from her, and walked towards the corner where my Uncle and Pa were talking. I knew that stepping away from her now meant stepping away for good, and I couldn’t bear to do it just yet. I turned back and saw her watching me, eyes shining with uncried tears even as the water overboiled and began to spill onto the flames beneath them. “I’d write,” I promised her. “Every week, if you want.”

She didn’t answer. Maybe she knew that, too, was a badly told lie.

* * *

Turns out Uncle had been telling Pa about the distant cousin out in Colorado. This cousin was breeding and selling horses, and Uncle had remembered how I was helping Hannes with his herd and wanted to know if I would be interested in some work out West. Pa had been reluctant at first, but after I butted into the conversation and said I would send a bit of money home each month, he became mighty positive about the whole thing. Things were settled quick and my departure was scheduled for the next train out. This weren’t for a couple of days, so I had enough time to get my things together. I’d thought Uncle Michael would be accompanying me, but when he laughed and shook his head and said he had enough to be worrying about with his canal boats, I truly realised how alone I was to become. Far from worrying about it, it excited me.

With a pouch of coin jingling in my pocket from the early wage from Hannes, I bought myself some new shirts and trousers with no holes in the knees. Ma didn’t speak much to me in those last few days, like looking at me would make me vanish into the air like the smoke from her cooking pot. Samanna invited me round for supper to her most recent beau’s, and though I resented her a little for leaving me alone so many nights with the likes of Alec for company, I had to admit that I would miss her. I hoped she would marry the young man I met – he seemed like a good, honest sort, and he made her laugh.

When I boarded the train alone that day in August, I was fourteen and bursting with an inexplicable feeling of freedom. The conductor gave me a once over, but once I brandished my ticket he left me to my own devices. Once the final whistles were blown and the train cars rattled away from the Phoenixville station, the lump appeared in my chest that told me I was finally, truly on my own. I clutched my case close to me, filled to bursting with clothes and books and all the necessities I thought it proper to pack, and scooted as close I could to the grime-flecked window. Phoenixville, with its urban sprawl and towers belching out dark thunderclouds of smog and silt, began to grow smaller in the distance, until it was nothing but a blip on the horizon. And then, just like that, it was gone completely. I settled down in my seat, and wondered what in the hell I thought I was doing.

Cities rushed by in roars and booms, and I only looked up when I felt the train sliding to a stop to let on more passengers. Sometime through the journey I brought out one of my books to let my nerve settle, but I’d finished it before I was halfway there. I contented myself with looking out the window then, watching as the flat grey slabs of road and sidewalk petered out to a rugged, wilder kind of world. This America was thick with shrub and plains, and as we cut through territory I was convinced was held by Native Americans, I caught sight of buffalo. The herd spooked at our sudden appearance, a great black monster in a world that hadn’t yet gotten used to it, and kept pace with the train for a good mile or so before they fell back, tired of the danger.

Colorado, once I arrived, turned out to be a patchwork of landscapes. When I stepped foot off the train and looked around at the town of Cortez that I’d landed myself in, I saw a town cowering at the foot of a great mountain range, the like of which I could only dream of previous. It was nothing more than a human offering at the foot of a natural giant, and I couldn’t stop my immature mouth from dropping wide open.

Laughter coming from my left made my mouth snap shut. It was a man, leaning against a fencepost with a pair of horses tethered either side of him. He was taller than me by a head or so, which made me feel more like a baby than I looked, and his teeth flashed white as he grinned at me. He had the same smile as my father, the same dark head of hair and unshakeable arrogance. “Impressive, ain’t it?” he asked. “Those mountains. Makes you wish you could fly up there and see the top.”

I took a tighter hold of my case and frowned at him, this man who looked a little like my father. “Guess so,” I said.

“Not much of a talker, are you?” he smiled. “You must be Jean?”

“Yes, sir.”

The man nodded, as though in agreement with himself. “’Course you are. Could tell a mile off. You got the Kirschtein look about you.” I weren’t sure whether to be flattered or offended by that. He patted his own chest. “I’m George.” He then gestured towards the horses, champing at their bits lazily. “Dad tells me you’ve ridden before?”

Uncle Mike had spoken of me too? I eyed the horse brought for me a little warily. It was a small, hardy little animal with a shrewd look in its eye, but I figured it was there for show. “I rode back home,” I answered.

“Were they cowponies?”

I ran a hand down the animal’s neck, noting the way its shoulders sloped down to a short back and rounded hindquarters with little distance. So this was a cowpony. It wasn’t quite the noble steed I imagined, but it had its own charm. Mine was a buckskin, a body the colour of the dying shrubbery around it and its legs and muzzle a darker smudge. Its coat was thick, used to the change in climates far more than the fancy high-steppers that Hannes had bred. “Not exactly,” I admitted. “The man I worked for bred Walkers and Saddlers.”

George snorted through his nose as he swung into his horse’s saddle. “You ain’t gonna be finding any of those here. But these are good horseflesh, good little workers once their training’s all done.” His horse, a bay with a white star on its forehead, made to move off but he kept it steady with a single hand. It softly mouthed the bit the way a baby would a teether, but remained in place. “I got a wagon just behind, you can put your case on that. Thought I might as well combine meeting you with a little errand running, is all.” I looked behind to the afore-mentioned wagon, which was laden with rope and cloth and various other materials. “We’re followin’ it behind, for safety. Bandits everywhere right now. You alright with that?”

I blinked. “What can we do to the bandits?”

It was George’s turn to frown. “You got a gun, right?”

“Why would I have a gun?”

George’s sigh told me all I needed to know – that I had a long trail to ride before I belonged out here.


	3. Act 1, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, friends! 
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed the first section about Jean as a kid and how he had those big, big plans: well this is where the plot really begins to take shape. Jean is working for his distant cousin, but he still wants for more. He meets someone who will inevitably become a lifelong friend, and has his first glimpse of Marco...
> 
> I'm so excited to see all of your wonderful comments on this! Thank you so much for supporting a project I've been pumping a lot of love into (that wasn't meant to sound weird) and I hope you continue to love it! :) 
> 
> As always I can be found on Tumblr or Twits if you have any questions or comments, or leave a comment here! I'm always a glutton for questions, so ask away!
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Tumblr: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @purple_tealeaf

It took a while to settle into life at George’s ranch. He lived far from Cortez on a modest plot of land that ran along a cattle ranch to the East, which he was particularly sore about. It was a stubborn little house, sprung up from the timber and scrubland, and though there was still some work that needed doing, it was a nice little place. It was a perfect nursery for me, at the time, to learn what I needed to. George weren’t no teacher, but he did his best.

His wife was a good-natured woman called Helena, who took me under her wing when she didn’t need to. She was only a few years older than me, and she already had a baby on her hip and another brewing in her belly. Still, she made me welcome and cooked me meals when the days were done, and I couldn’t have been more thankful to her. One thing I found out quick was that George weren’t no rancher, not in his heart; he’d had the vision, sure, but not the drive to keep it going. He didn’t know what he was doing, not really, and that suited me just fine. We learnt together, him to run a business and me to work the way the West needed me to. A bit of business sense may have been knocked into my head at the same time, but there ain’t no telling where that vanished to.

The horses George was raising were either captured from the wild or bought cheap from market. The wild ones, the Mustangs, were the ones that fascinated me the most. Many of them, mare and stallion alike, had been born into the elements, in a world unlike our own with the comforts of a home and shelter when we wanted it. It made them strong and determined sons of bitches– and cunning. George was forever telling me to mind the Mustangs. He spoke of them like one would speak of an unwelcome relative – respectful, but with a grumble and a grimace too. “The Quarters are fine,” he would say, pointing out the larger animals in the milling herd. “They’re all broke and most are gentle as lambs. But the Mustangs are clever. Don’t go trying to outsmart ‘em – you’ll lose.”

It was one of the better pieces of advice he gave me. I stayed away from the Mustangs for a good long while as I found my feet. Instead, I focused on the more practical things; George taught me how to fix fences, how to pick the right mare for the right stallion to get the best foal available, and how to get the best price for a horse at market. We didn’t run cattle because there was no point in competing with the cattle baron along from us. But though they was a large operation, we didn’t see hide nor hair of ‘em on our land. At least they knew to respect our boundaries.

We were driving a mare and foal to market one day when I got a first-hand acquaintance with our cattle-driving neighbours. Market days were my favourite kind; they gave the opportunity to remind myself that there were more people in this place than just me, George and his family. It was a comfort knowing that, sometimes. Market day brought men from all walks of life to the sleepy little town, and it gave many the opportunity to meet old friends, swap stories about their crops and livestock and generally have a good time. I weren’t necessarily doing that; I’d been with George six months and I hadn’t found no friends yet. George blamed my silence. I blamed the empty plains.

Once we’d driven the mare and foal into the corral (the mare squealing the whole time and trying her best to bite), George dismounted and tethered his gelding at one of the posts nearby. “I’m off to the saloon,” he said without looking at me. “Got to see a man about a dog.”

I stayed in the saddle and frowned at him. “Don’t you want to stick around in case someone wants to buy the horses?”

“Naw, no one’s gonna want to buy ‘em yet,” George said, waving off my question. “They want a drink, they want a gamble, then they wants to spend their winnings. C’mon, come with me.”

I looked to the saloon doors, where an uproar of laughter belched out from within. I blanched. “I’d rather not.”

“Aw c’mon, you want the West experience, you got the West experience!” His tone became a little sly as he added, “could even set you up with a girl, if you wanted. Make you a man.”

Now I really was blushing. “I’ll stay with the horses,” I repeated, in what I hope sounded firm.

For a moment, I wondered if George was determined enough to drag me off my horse and push me through those doors to the shrieking, laughing den beyond, but he simply shrugged and backed off. “Suit yourself. Keep the nags company. Make sure they behave themselves.”

As he made off (no doubt to drink away any money we could be using for better horses), it was down to me to collect and attach the right tags onto our horses, so’s the buyers knew who to speak to. Some horses, I noticed, had brands freshly burned and bleeding on their flesh. It looked like it smarted some. George didn’t have the right to brand; tags on ropes worked just as well though, and part of me was glad. I wasn’t sure I’d be alright with branding a horse and leaving it to bleed.

I stayed by the corral with our two mounts, his the shiny chestnut and mine the same buckskin I’d been picked up with all those months ago. It was an unwritten rule that the gelding was now mine to use, and when I’d asked George for a name and got a confused glance in reply, I elected to name the beast Buck. I never was good at naming.

I tried to look approachable to the folk milling about, but not too much so. Looking too interested in people always tended to bring trouble your way – something I’d learnt quick enough, and something I really didn’t want. Still, I couldn’t help noticing a group of ranch hands around my age leaning against one of the cattle pens. There were four of them, all talking amongst themselves and looking at no one else. There was one, apparently the ringleader, who had a shaved head and dark skin – and an obnoxiously loud laugh. He was clearly the funny type, for all the boys around him were laughing at his jokes and cuffing him around the head the way boys do. I watched them as I dismounted, pretending to fuss over Buck but in reality straining to hear the joke the ringleader was telling. I gritted my teeth. I hated to be the kid in the corner, peering at those boys like they were some kind of colourful animal and I a hunter. It’d never occurred to me that loneliness was a disease you could catch, ‘til I felt its bite that day.

Being lonely had its advantages though; it meant I’d practiced what I had been taught ten times over, and did so tirelessly. George had given me an old cattleman’s revolver of his, more to carry than to use, but I was determined to get it working smoothly. It was rusting in places, the barrel clogged with lack of cleaning from a time when George didn’t care much for his tools. It weren’t the best of gifts, but I cherished it as much as I cherished Buck. I spent most of my dollars on ammunition to practice shooting and many a night working away at it, cleaning it up and making sure the chamber rotated around the proper way; so much so that George would mock me for it and say that I had a more intimate relationship with the revolver than I did with any girl in the town. He was, unfortunately, too right in that case; I spooked like a nervous horse every time one of them would come near, which caused George endless amusement.

I brought the gun out of its holster and just held it, liking the way it fitted so snug in my palm. I made sure to point it at nobody, but the glint off the silver was enough for the crowd to give me a wide berth.

When George returned from the tavern with a pocketful of coin and a tale about some farmer from the town over wanting the mare and foal for breeding stock, I decided to ask the question that’d been dancing on my lips for the past half hour. “Who are those boys?” 

“Huh?” he looked over where I was gazing, and let out a short laugh. “Those lot? They’re LC boys.”

“LC boys?”

“Pixis’ lot. From the ranch over.” Of course. “Must be selling some of the old man’s surplus. His cattle goes for a good price. Only reason they’d bother to make the day and a half’s ride here.” He couldn’t have sounded more bitter if he was sucking on a lemon. He indicated the leader with his chin, the one who at that moment slapped one of his friends on the back so hard they almost toppled into the pen. “That’s Connie Springer. He’s a nice lad, that one, and sharp as a tack. Came from Utah, he says. Works hard too, always willing to help a man out if he needs it.”

I stared at Connie Springer long enough to get noticed, and quickly looked away. “You trying to drop a hint that I should make friends?” I asked.

George shrugged, that familiar grin creasing his face. “Ain’t saying nothing. But maybe a friend will keep you from sticking to me like a tick.” With a click of his tongue, his horse sprang into a trot, and with a roll of my eyes, I followed. 

We made it out of the town at a leisurely pace, George talking about the news he’d received from the other ranchers. It was news that meant little to me; a wife had died, another had given birth to twins, there were expansions and reductions. I liked the way George told me anyway; it was one of the only times I felt as though my distant cousin kept me around for more reason than the extra manpower.

Once we were clear of the town and the talk petered out, George gave me a short grin. “C’mon, Jean, time to let these boys have their heads. Turn that buckskin loose, let’s see what he can do.”

Before I could react, he dug his heels into his chestnut’s sides and they were off, bolting across the plains like possessed things. I asked Buck for a gallop, already smiling despite myself, and he responded with gusto.

There is nothing closer to flying, they say, than being on the back of a galloping horse. Sitting there, leaning into every stride, feeling every hoof that hits the ground, you feel a sense of freedom you don’t get nowhere else. That’s how I felt racing back from market. The wind snatched the air from my lungs, and Buck snorted heavily through his nose as we began to gain on George. His Quarter was faster than Buck, but we kept pace with them. What my horse lacked in speed, he made up for with stamina.

Buck was a half-bred, George told me, his sire having been taken from the mountain ranges fringing our home and his dam one of the Quarter Horses a neighbour had let George lease. The sire escaped shortly after, and George still didn’t know where he’d wandered off to. Romantics would say he’d gone back to his herd, in the foot of the mountains. Others would say he was caught by another interested party and sold on the way horses are. Nevertheless, Buck and I were good partners, the same way I was with the mules back home. We had some kinda common ground about us, and I liked that.

Still, as we slowed our pace and fringed the top of the hill leading down to the ranch house, my mind was still galloping. I couldn’t help but think back to the market, and the boys standing by the cattle pens.

There are those who would think sore of me, thinking of another sorta life as we was heading back with money in our pockets and hope for the future, but I was young and romantic. I wanted _more_. George taught me well, though he weren’t no teacher, but that feeling of progress was nudging at me again. It told me to move on, like a stallion pushing the colt from a herd, and I knew that it had to happen sooner or later. I wouldn’t be welcome in the house forever. I was family, sure, but not proper family – I was part of George’s home the way the furniture was, or a photo on the mantelpiece. We shared a last name and a glint in our eyes, but that was all. George’s family was growing, and soon he would have his own sons to teach and pick up after. I didn’t want to be the boy on the outskirts, the one who never moved and never shifted.

That was why, when the summer cattle drives were ready to start up, I snuck out of the stables in the early morning with Buck to look for work. George wouldn’t care – he’d think I was out on a ride, and wouldn’t bother looking for me until at least two days later. He was remarkably easy to avoid like that. I saddled up, mounted with as much elegance as I could muster, and set off. I headed East, the way to the cattle baron. The way to the LC Ranch.

George had been correct in saying it was a day’s ride to the ranch; Buck did his best, but the furious gallops I whipped him into weren’t built to last and we had to rest plenty. After exhausting the both of us, I just let Buck have his head and nudged him with my heels if ever he went off track. We ambled along at a steady pace this way for half a day. I rode through the night, though my eyes felt bruised and my legs ached against the saddle leather. I dozed a few minutes, but Buck just kept plodding on, flicking his tail at the flies that bothered him and doing little to jolt me into waking.

When I did reach the outskirts of the ranch at sunrise, I found I could go no farther. There was wire across the path, a cruel scar curved into the land to separate the grazing areas from off the Ranch’s map. I dismounted to take a look, pressing the wire into my thumb to check just how sharp it was, and Buck stuck his head under the fence to nip at the grass on the other side.

The wire bit into my flesh sharp and clean, and blood beaded where it struck. I brought my thumb to my mouth, thinking, and checked the height. It was big enough for a cow to think twice about jumping – they weren’t exactly natural jumpers – but it may have been small enough to allow for a horse. I looked at the wire then at Buck a few times, trying to judge the height he would have to make to clear it, when a voice beside me cleared its throat.

“I wouldn’t wanna be doin’ that if I were you.”

I damn near jumped out of my skin. It was the boy from the market, the boy with the big smile and loud laugh. Connie Springer, I remembered in time. This time, he didn’t look as though he was laughing or smiling. In fact, he was frowning. I backed off sharpish, wiping my thumb on my jacket for good measure, and gave him a measured look. “What d’you mean?”

“You was thinking of jumping it. I could see it in the way you was looking. Trust me, it ain’t a good idea.” Connie paused. “Matter o’ fact, it’s damn stupid of you.”

I was staring. I knew I was. Staring was something of a thing I did, when I wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe part of me hoped that, if I looked hard enough the words would just fall out my mouth. Alas, it was never that simple.

The boy was watching me from atop a broken coloured horse, still blowing hard from a gallop. Though we was around the same age, it was all too obvious that he was more accustomed to this life than I was. His chaps were worn down to a smooth leather from where he’d had to cling to the sides of his horse. The flannel shirt he wore, with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, was riddled with stitches and loose fixes. His boots were cracked and dusty from the dry earth and his hat looked a little worse for wear. In spite of it all, he was undoubtedly a cowboy.

He cocked his head, a toothy smile appearing in response to my scrutiny. “You catching flies there, friend?”

I shut my mouth, that I didn’t know had dropped open, promptly. “No,” I retorted, like a child.

The boy laughed, that same loud guffaw I’d heard in the marketplace. “Y’know, us folk can herd cattle. We’ve been doing it a far sight longer than you. I just do it as a free man. Almost,” he added as an afterthought.

I was confused for a moment, but then quickly realised what he meant. Horror dawned on me. “Oh, no, it ain’t like that,” I said, hurriedly. “I don’t care about what you look like, that weren’t it. Just…” I fumbled for words, any words at all, that wouldn’t sound just plain stupid coming out of my mouth. “I’m just looking for work, is all. I heard the LC Ranch was around here someplace.” When Springer’s smile softened, I ploughed on, twirling my reins through my fingers like some scolded child. “I haven’t slept. I been riding non-stop. I’m sorry if my attentions are offending you at all. I don’t mean nothing by it.”

Springer blinked, the smile vanishing from his face. “Oh.” He dismounted in a swift motion, grabbing his horse by the reins even as it reached down to snatch a few mouthfuls of grass. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”

I frowned. “It that obvious?”

“Yeah.” He smiled again, but it were weaker this time, more sincere. “You apologise. Don’t know no one who apologises round here.” He gave his horse a smart pat on the neck before he looked back at me. “Where d’you come from?”

I wondered if I should lie. But then Springer smiled again, that same smaller, sincere smile, and I figured if he was being honest with me, it weren’t proper to be dishonest to him. “Pennsylvania,” I answered.

He whistled through his teeth. “Whew. You’re a long way from home.”

For the first time since I met Springer, I smiled. Far from feeling lonely, I felt strong. Powerful. “Guess I am.”

His expression became thoughtful as he scratched his horse idly on its shoulder. “Alright, well look here: you’re at the LC Ranch. Well, on its fringes at least,” he said, gesturing to the wire. “And the old man needs workers. Can’t deny that. But I ain’t the one to be buttering up.” He turned his head suddenly, like he’d heard some sound I hadn’t, and his face changed. “I gotta get going. Listen, you want a job? Here’s some advice.” He leaned close so I could hear his whisper. “You walk into that ranch house, and you tell the old man you’re an orphan.”

I frowned. “An orphan? But I’m-”

“I don’t care if you ain’t. If you want this job, you say you are. You got no family, not even a great aunt Bessie living in Timbuktu.” He drew back from me, his eyebrows raised in a serious sort of way. “You’re an orphan,” he clarified. “You say that, you got a job here.”

Before I could question him, he sprang into his horse’s saddle and clicked his tongue. With a snort, the animal moved off at a trot. Springer didn’t look back once. I watched them break into a lope and vanish over the crest of a small hill and turned back to Buck, who was snoozing in the softly warming morning sun. I’d have to get back to the homestead – it was too late in the day now.

George weren’t mad that I’d gone off without him. I think he knew, in his heart of hearts, where I’d been and what I was planning. He just watched from his porch as I trotted morosely back towards the house, Buck’s coat damp with sweat and my eyes downcast and guilty. We made eye contact, George and I, but I didn’t say nothing. I just slowed Buck down to a walk, and finally halted before the house, looking up at my cousin. George didn’t say nothing either – for once, he had nothing to quibble or taunt about – and in the end, just jerked his head towards the barn.

“Get that horse rubbed down and back in the stables. We have to start breaking the yearlings this week before the summer ends.”

I just did as he asked, no words shared between the pair of us.

He hired another two hands the next day, a kid the same age as me but born and bred in the county and a middle-aged cowboy, and that was proof enough for me. George, in no uncertain terms, was expecting me to make a timely departure. Well, I weren’t gonna be the one to disappoint him. I slipped away a second time that week, and this time I followed the road.

The LC Ranch was a behemoth in comparison to George’s little homestead. Even to start with, it showed it was a proper operation they was running there. After I rode under the sign proclaiming the ranch in a bold, white paint, there was still a winding track to take before I reached the main house. I’d paced myself a touch better this time around, and Buck was not as wasted as he had been before; he picked up the pace at the sound of horses ahead, ears pricked forwards with interest as my hands clenched the rein to avoid showing my nerves.

The barn that came into view was big enough to fit Hannes’ and George’s barns inside it at the same time, and it was certainly made with more skilled hands. The corrals were bigger too, with places to drive animals into and cut ‘em off for health checks or branding… or anything else unsavoury. They were already pushing a young steer into the crush, a team of four boys who held it steady on either side whilst a fifth mixed a bottle of something to administer. I didn’t recognise Connie Springer in the group. It was all well and good; I didn’t know what I’d say to him anyway. It weren’t like we knew each other.

Those boys watched me though, as I walked Buck past them and towards the main house, their eyes burning into my back like the sun. I let ‘em stare. I thought I’d be the kind that wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb no more; the months had been equal parts kind and cruel to me, meaning I had grown taller and gotten wiser, but with the broken skin and dusted clothes to show for it. Clearly, I thought as I passed a hand carrying a hay bale in the opposite direction, I was mistaken. They all gawped at me like I was some sort of ghost set to haunt them. I chose to ignore them, and tethered Buck against the post nearest the house, and wondered if their boss was as unnerving as they all were.

It turned out that employment here was easy as walking in proclaiming yourself ready and able for work. The ‘old man’ Pixis weren’t exactly what I expected; he was a tall man, easy a head taller than me and built like the kind of man who had been strong once. He was almost completely bald, but had a moustache that compensated for his lack of hair on his head. He welcomed me in like an old friend, offered me a whiskey, and talked about wages and hours as I stood awkwardly in the corner. He seemed like the sort of man who didn’t get company often, or got company too much and thought everyone owed him a conversation.

“My family,” he said after a while, swirling his drink around the glass like he was trying to create a whirlpool, “has been in the beef business for decades. We know good stock when we see ‘em. And I’m in the business of knowing what good ranch hands look like.” He pointed the glass at me, the rings on his fingers glinting in the sun. “You, my boy, look like good stock.”

I coloured considerably, and took to staring into my own drink to avoid meeting his eye. “Why thank you, sir.”

“Tell me, are you an orphan?”

I tensed. The truth bubbled up to the surface, squirming for a breath, but I set it down as easy as I set my glass on the nearest table. “Yes, sir. Since I was nine.”

Pixis’ moustache, by some miracle, appeared to droop, though his eyes sparked with interest. “Why, I’m sorry to hear that. How did it happen?”

I floundered for a reason, anything that could sound like it could be the truth. Like a firstborn idiot, I said the first word that came to mind.

“Buffalo,” I answered, and immediately wanted to smack myself in the face with something extremely heavy.

The old man’s eyebrows rose so far they almost fell off the back of his head. “Buffalo, you say? How unusual.”

I wanted very much to sink into the wallpaper and remain there until the colour in my cheeks receded. Thankfully, I could blame it on the whiskey. I picked the glass back up and downed what remained in one painful swallow. “Don’t like to talk about it,” I responded weakly.

Pixis, however, seemed to take that as a logical answer. “Quite right, quite right,” he nodded, as though I was being perfectly normal, and offered me the job on the spot. It would only be a few days a week to begin with, but then the fall would come, and with it the roundup. Then, I’d be expected to work like I’d never worked before, according to him.

I left the house a little dizzied from whiskey and good news, and didn’t notice the familiar form of Springer grinning at me until I reached Buck’s saddlebags. “So you get the job, Tenderfoot?” he called out. He was leaning against the fence, watching me with great interest.

I tried to hide my excitement when I nodded. “Didn’t take much.”

Springer laughed. “Never does.” He tilted his head. “Did he ask you if you were an orphan?”

“He did. Why does he ask that?”

Springer gave me a smirk that weren’t exactly a friendly one. “Because if you’re an orphan there ain’t no one there to miss you.”

I began to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all.

* * *

It soon became clear why Pixis was more likely to hire orphans for his ranch work. The work was tough, tougher than I was used to, and it carved me into a shape that the work with George had been unable to. During the summer when the majority of the cattle herds were still out on the main pastures far to the North, it was a matter of feeding and fattening the other animals there were for meat about the place, and training the horses. It was a good and fair introduction to cowboy life, the kind I needed, and Springer (he demanded I call him Connie thereafter) was there to take me under his wing whether I liked it or not.

I soon found out that he really was the same age as me, just shy of fifteen, and it was also true that he weren’t a born and bred Colorado citizen. “I come from all over,” he told me once, as we were stood grooming horses in the yard. “That’s why I don’t settle. Get myself some itchy feet and gotta get going. Been at this ranch a good six month now, and only cus the pickings is good. We get good pay, good lodgings and good food. That’s all you want, in the line o’ work we’re in. A happy belly and a full pocket.”

Something about him, be it his wanderer’s heart or sheer romanticism of the place we called home, made me like Connie Springer. He was a good man, who could handle a horse and throw a rope better than most. And so, when I mentioned this to him in a moment of weakness, he showed me what he knew.

I was still working at George’s homestead a few days a week helping to break the youngstock for market days, and so it was an unspoken agreement that I could take Buck for my time spent on the LC Ranch. Buck and I had become something of a team; I had come to understand the buckskin’s many quirks and vices, and knew exactly when he was planning on fussing me. When the day came to leave George for good, I knew I would have to haggle for Buck’s price. As any good cowboy knows, a man is only as good as the horse he rides, and Buck was shaping up to be a pretty good partner indeed.

Connie would take us out into one of the empty pastures and get me roping targets from standing and from the saddle, and would embarrass me by doing it himself so much better. His horse, the broken coloured paint I’d seen before, was supple and yielding to every command of Connie’s, and as they swept past us in a wide arc to take an animal down, they appeared to be but one creature, entwined. “How,” I panted, after another gruelling session, “do you do it?”

“Do what?” Connie halted his mare in a sliding stop, her nostrils flaring pinkly as he spun her around to look at me.

“She… she trusts you. Buck trusts me, sure, but not the way your horse trusts you.”

Connie smiled and patted the side of her neck. “Mags here has been my girl for a good three years. You learn things about one another, after so long. Your horse becomes your company, when you’re out there in the dark with no good men about to talk to. We trust each other to get out of jams. She knows she can save me if I need to, but she also knows that I can help her out. They ain’t just some beasts of burden you can knock about and say you own ‘em. They’re more than that.” He shrugged. “Well, cowponies, at least. Mags here could run circles around those prissy showponies you see in the towns.”

I thought back to Hannes and his horse-breeding operation, and decided not to talk about it. As we dismounted at the corral and turned the horses loose, Connie said, “Look, there’s a race in town tomorrow, ‘bout noon. Me and a few of the boys are going down to watch, if you fancy a trip?”

I gave a mute nod and a short smile, but it was enough to answer his question. All those memories of being on the sidelines looking in were slowly fading. I guess that was the first time, in a long while, that I felt as though I truly belonged. And it felt rather nice.

* * *

We saddled up early to get into the town. Connie woke me with a less than elegant smack upside the head after I refused to rise on his first warning, and though I buzzed with anger as well as dizziness, I couldn’t find it in me to be completely mad.

We weren’t heading to Cortez, but to Telluride; it was a small mining town, wedged in a box canyon and teeming with people. I’d been a few times before with George, but we’d never bothered to stay too long; the men there weren’t often in the market for horseflesh that they didn’t want to send down the mines. Mules were the best for that, and George refused to dilute his Quarter blood with donkey. There was plenty of good stores and a doctor for the mining folk that we sometimes frequented, but there was also plenty of gunfights and arguments over pretty much anything a man could think of to argue about. Still, I weren’t one to pass up the opportunity to ride out.

The boys accompanying us were all about the same age, the boys I remembered at the market when I had gone with George. Thomas, Samuel, Boris. Connie called ‘em out for my benefit as well as a greeting in itself, and they all looked up from their snorting, champing horses. Their eyes fell on me and I felt myself bristle. Instead of sizing me up and curling their lips, however, they greeted me like an old friend, smacking my back and knocking my hat off my head in a playful jest.

“Jean!”

“Hey Jean! Nice of you to join us.”

“Howdy.”

I gave them each a smile and mounted, settling myself deep in the saddle for the long ride to civilisation. Connie gave me a small grin and led the way, Mags setting the pace at a steady trot. I swore I saw Pixis waving us off from his porch, but none of the others seemed to notice. I tipped my hat all the same.

Turned out that the boys were chattier than I thought they were. Thomas, a blonde bulk of a boy with a heavy hand and a gentle disposition, was the first to strike up a conversation. “I haven’t seen a race like this for a long while! Did you hear about who’s racing?”

“Yeah,” Samuel said, a boy with flyaway hair and a pinched expression. “You blab your mouth about it every chance you get, Wagner.”

Thomas took a swing at him, but they both laughed and budged their horses against one another. “I heard some are racing for ownership this time,” Boris chipped in. He was mousey, with a perpetually worried expression that made him sound anxious even when he didn’t wanna be. “No one wants to race for money no more, ‘specially against Jaeger’s mare.”

“Jaeger’s mare?” I asked, unable to help myself.

Connie turned in his saddle to explain. “That’s the horse we’re betting on. Her name’s Betty, owned by one Eren Jaeger.” The way he said the man’s name made me believe he weren’t too keen on him. “Jaeger’s a good guy to know in the horse racing business, he knows good runners when he sees one. Races for money and ownership, that one. He got Betty off a fella who didn’t ride her proper – now he got someone who can, she’s nigh-on unstoppable. And he knows it, the arrogant bastard.”

Boris nodded eagerly. “That’s right. She’s quality horseflesh, thoroughbred stock they say, and a fierce little lady.”

“But that ain’t what people watch the race for, Boris,” Connie cut in. He reined Mags back so she fell into step beside them all. “Like I said, Betty’s only as good as the person who rides her. If the rider knows how she ticks, she’ll run like a champ. If they don’t…” he shrugged and mimed a bucking motion. I winced.

As we got into Telluride, the air was rife with activity and excitement. Most of the stores were either closing up or closed already, and even the mule trains to the mines had stopped. People were jostling one another for position near the town’s edge, crowding around a group of anxiously twisting horses. “We’re late!” Connie cried, dismayed. “Damnit, we’ll never get a good space now!”

“Better stay mounted,” Thomas suggested, shifting his weight in the saddle. “At least we can see they’re on horses up here and not pigs.”

I kept a tight hold on Buck’s reins, for he was shuffling and blowing through his nose at the energy that was filling the place. People were calling out bets to a portly man with a board over his head, fistfuls of dollars were being waved around like handkerchiefs, and excited shrieks from the women hanging out of the tavern windows were making Buck nervous, and me along with him. Thomas and Samuel rode down to place their bets with the little man, and I had to rein Buck in to stop him from following. “C’mon Tenderfoot,” Connie said, walking Mags over to a better vantage point. “You gotta get a good look at the race if this is your first time.”

I followed him, trying my utmost to stop Buck from bolting into the middle of the crowd. “What are the stakes?” I asked.

Connie grinned. “What _aren’t_ the stakes? At the moment, Betty’s got a low bet. Most people have seen her run before, y’see. They know what she’s capable of. But then again, the other riders have good blooded horses. I heard Old Man Pixis tell Thomas that one of the runners had desert blood in him.”

I glanced at him, surprised. “Pixis likes to horserace?”

“Everyone does,” Connie said. “It gives us what little entertainment we get in Telluride that ain’t girls, drinking or fighting.”

I paled at the very suggestion of the other options, and Connie patted my shoulder in gentle understanding. “Don’t you worry, I won’t tell the others if you don’t.”

“Wh-what you meaning?”

Connie gave me a pitying sort of look that had enough knowledge in it to make the heat rise higher in my cheeks, but turned his attention back to the runners. There was four of them in all, two bays and a twitchy looking roan, and they were all churning up the ground to dust as they waited for the signal. Connie squinted. “That’s odd, I don’t see Betty nowhere.”

“Can’t have scratched,” Samuel said, riding up to us with his brows drawing down into a disappointed glare. “Seismore let me bid.” He gestured to the man holding the betting board.

“Seismore would let you bid on Pegasus,” Connie said. “Careful of your ticket.”

“Where could she be?” I asked, sweeping my eyes down the line of restless horses.

“Oh, there they are!” Connie pointed in the opposite direction. I looked.

The black horse that was jogging down the Telluride main street was easily one of the uglier horses I’d seen in my time. Her head was overtly large and easily thrown this way and the next, and her eyes showed their whites no matter where they rolled. Her body, however, was that of an athlete’s; sleek, fine-boned and desperate for the off. Thoroughbred blood, I figured. It was taking two people to handle her, one of which was yanking her head back down every time she tossed her head.

“That’s Jaeger,” Connie said, nodding his head towards the slighter man struggling with the mare. Eren Jaeger was dark and shrewd to match his mare, with blazing eyes that pierced through the soul of anyone who had the misfortune to look directly at them. Despite his size, he was handling the fighting horse remarkably well; he was shouting to it, snapping the reins sharp against her teeth in a way that made me wince.

His helper was having less luck, and seemed to know it. Without warning, Betty lashed out and sunk her teeth into his arm. With a scream he tore loose, blood flying from the wound in ribbons, and Eren’s concentration slipped for a moment. It was enough; the demon yanked herself loose, ripping the reins from his hands and half-rearing in her attempts to get clear from him.

“Marco get her!” were the words I heard yelled, and someone stepped towards her with purpose in his stride. I hadn’t noticed him before; he’d been stood away from the action, talking to one of the women from the tavern with folded arms, but with a sharp jerk of his head he’d come to his friend’s aid. It was clear he’d been ready to step in, should he need to.

In a dark blur he rushed into the street, hands outstretched for Betty’s reins, and by some miracle of God he grabbed them. Betty dropped down from her rear with a squeal of rage, shaking her head and pinning her ears flat back against her head. The man, however, didn’t move. He didn’t show an ounce of fear – not that one. The helper doubled back, clutching his arm and sobbing like a newborn babe, and Jaeger seemed struck dumb by the whole thing. The other man didn’t cry or freeze. He just stared at Betty, watched the way she threw herself around and jigged and snorted, and he let her do it. He even had the nerve to smile at her.

He was taller than Eren, taller than me I reckoned, with a strong jaw and shoulders that moved with the horse, never forcing her into one space and always letting her have her head. He had no hat; his hair was dark and short, with parts that hung down his face and stuck in the sweat rolling down it from the still-harsh sun, and if I squinted I could pick out the slight marking of freckles across his cheeks. His brows, heavy though they were, raised as Betty snorted particularly loudly, and he said something I couldn’t catch from the din the crowd was making ahead. They had all turned, and were watching. They were watching this man calm this horse.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Connie swore.

I turned to him. “What?”

“I didn’t think he was in this part o’ the country. I heard tell he’d moved down South.” Connie gave a low whistle. “Those other men don’t stand no chance.”

“Why?”

Connie angled his gaze to mine and said, rather seriously, “When Marco Bodt is in a race, you ain’t got no chance in the born world.”

It was the first time I heard his name. I want to say it was like a shock of electric, that some kinda power I didn’t know what to do with surged through me. I want to say it – but I can’t. I just took _Marco Bodt_ as a name and nothing more. I nodded like I always did and watched this man, this _boy_ wrestle with a horse, and thought it nothing more than a day’s entertainment.

I’d be lying, however, if I weren’t intrigued by him.

Words were forming on his lips, whispering to the mare as she calmed, and with a sidelong glance to Jaeger, he turned around and leapt into her saddle. A roar came up from the crowd. Betty skittered sideways, champing at the bit like a small dragon, but with the slightest pressure she was quiet, standing like a lamb on a lead. Marco had the reins in one hand, the other pressing small circles into her neck where the skin jumped and twitched. He nudged her forward with a boot, and she responded immediately, prancing forward on her bit like a circus pony. Jaeger offered Marco a beaten down old hat with a smirk. Marco placed it on his head and returned the smirk, all teeth and fangs.

“That’s it,” Connie sighed, as they rode past, “the town of Telluride is goin’ bankrupt and it’s all cus of Marco goddamn Bodt!” To my immense surprise, Marco’s eyes wandered over Connie and lingered on him for a moment. Then they flashed, in a natural way, to me. Marco Bodt gave a crooked smile, and I felt the heat creeping up my neck some. It was a smile I was to grow used to, over the years. For that moment, however, I looked away sharpish until he went past on Betty. He made me nervous and I weren’t all that sure of the reason. All I knew was that I was watching him in a horse race. That was all. Everything else, as I’m sure you know, came later.

When he and Betty got through the crowd, the other riders quietened save for one. This was a newcomer too, his mount snapping at the other horses and no saddle to be seen. It was a small creature, scrappy and once-wild, with a coat black as pitch save for a white splash all over its face, like it had stuck its head in a pail o’ paint. Nobody was paying attention to the horse. They was looking at the man holding its head, a man clad in animal skins and colourful beading. “What’s an Indian doing here?” I heard Samuel ask, but I weren’t listening. Like the crowd, I was watching the brave throw a blanket over the animal’s broad back and mount in one swift motion, gripping the pony’s sides with his knees. None of the riders moved.

“Jesus Christ,” Connie breathed.

I frowned. “What? That’s nothing more than an Indian pony!”

“Not just any Indian pony,” Connie said. He sounded a little awed.

“How did they get the Utes to agree to _this_?” Boris asked.

Ah, the Utes. I had a thin knowledge of them. They were a Northern tribe of natives, a people who had made Colorado their home for thousands of years before we white folk got involved and ruined everything. That explained the other Native Americans in the group of people, baying for blood and shouting names. It also explained why the other riders were keeping their horses well out of range. Betty was the only horse that was nudged close, her nostrils flaring and entire body quivering with the urge to run. “Who’s the pony?” I asked.

“White Face,” Thomas answered. He couldn’t take his eyes off where the two horses were facing off, Bodt making sure to incline his head low as a sign of respect to the brave riding. “He’s the Ute tribe’s most treasured animal, I heard tell. They say he’s their good luck charm. God knows what strings Jaeger and Bodt had to pull to get ‘em racing against one another.”

“Must be why they’re racing part money, part ownership,” Boris said.

White Face struck out at Betty with a squeal of a dominant stallion when she got too close, and Bodt let out a shout as the mare wheeled away from the threat, eyes rolling. That was when I noticed; as the brave riding White Face turned him about, there was a hole in the horse’s face. A hole where an eye should’ve been. “He’s only got one eye,” I said, feeling slightly faint at the realisation.

Connie nodded. “Imagine how fast he’d be if he had both of ‘em,” he joked.

I didn’t laugh. All of a sudden the air was thick again, this time with a tension no one cared to shake. The horses had stopped turning. The other riders still kept their distance from the brave, but Bodt stood Betty beside him, sending a glare down the line of anxious horses and riders. The brave took no notice; he was looking ahead, knees pressed into White Face’s sides ready to be dug in.

The crowd parted to show the quarter mile gallop the horses would take. Even from where I stood, near the back and far from the main body of shrieking crowd, I could see the concentration steal over Bodt. All smiles vanished from his face, and what replaced it was cold, hard determination. The roan horse’s rider was trying to get a reaction out of the group, whipping them into as much a frenzy as he was doing his horse, but Bodt stayed dead silent, the only movement a small gesture on Betty’s neck, a gentle pressure to remind her he was there.

Someone stood near the start mark with a pistol, and all five men tensed in their seats.

It was fired, the horses surged forward, and the crowd ran with them. I lost the two riders I was most interested in during the chaos of jostling bodies.

“Come on, Jean!” Connie said, spinning Mags in a circle and digging his heels into her sides. “I know a place we can get a good view.”

Buck didn’t need persuading to leap into a gallop; like a coiled spring he burst forth, his gallop easily keeping pace with Connie’s paint until we got out of Telluride and started to clamber up a slight incline. With every labouring step Buck took, I heard the rolling thunder of the racing horses. I turned in my saddle to watch, Buck hesitating as I did so, and caught sight of two shapes breaking away from the mass of charging horses. When we got to the right place, the riders were long gone. “Not to worry,” Connie said, patting me on the shoulder, “we can stay up here. Catch the last part of the race. That’s the most interesting part, anyways.”

It didn’t take long. Before I knew it, the riders were coming back, the roar of hooves becoming too loud to talk over. I saw Betty first, but White Face was just in front. The mare was flat out, Bodt flush against her back as though he were nothing more’n a shadow. They was gaining. White Face was keeping a good fight, the brave snapping his reins and whooping to scare the stallion into running faster. Somewhere along the line, the blanket had been lost. Didn’t look like the brave cared that much, though. The other riders were far behind, and the crowd seemed to know it had always been a two-horse race. And those exact two were tearing across the dry and dusty earth, the ground rumbling with the impact of their hooves, and I found my heart working its way up into my mouth as they approached the finish line.

“How they going?” I asked Connie.

Connie, to my surprise, let out a triumphant laugh. “Just watch.”

I did. And what I saw defied imagination. I saw Bodt turn his head as Betty drew up alongside White Face, watch the brave out the corner of his eye, and then Betty found a whole new gear. She was no longer galloping – she was _flying,_ and Bodt was doing nothing but holding on as she pulled away from White Face and kept going.

And going.

Her stride never slackened, not one inch – not until they passed the finish line four lengths ahead and got pulled aside by a hoarsely shouting Eren Jaeger.

White Face finished with little supporters, and before the brave had chance to realise what had happened, Eren’s helper from before was riding over and throwing a rope over the pony’s head, giving the brave the nudge to dismount. Exhausted, the stallion made no resistance and allowed himself to be led over to the loudly celebrating group. The other riders thundered over in a cavalry charge of horseflesh and men that were sagged in their saddles. I wondered how long it had taken them to realise there was no chance of catching the two horses everyone had come to see.

“Good on them,” Samuel said as we watched Jaeger mount the stallion and ride him around with joyful yells. “You see the way Bodt rode that mare? They deserve to win and no mistake.”

“Yeah, but they’re finished now. Ain’t no idiot that’s gonna pit his horse against Betty now,” Thomas said. “No one wants to lose their horse to Eren Jaeger.”

Connie didn’t look too pleased with the proceedings. He was worrying the skin around his thumb, deep in thought. When he caught me looking, he said, “There’s gonna be trouble. C’mon, let’s get back to town. I need to get me some grub before we go back to the ranch and get that gristle crap the cook’s always forcing down our throats.”

I frowned, but followed him despite my questions. Buck was still fizzy from the race and the noise, but I kept him in line. Connie was right, somehow, for I could feel the hostility from the Utes that stared us down as we got back into the Telluride town limit. For once, the feel of a gun in my holster gave me the sense of security I’d been lacking before. “Calm yourself down,” Connie instructed beside me. I hadn’t realised I’d even been reaching for my holster. “They ain’t doing anything – not yet.”

“You seem so sure they will do something,” I said.

Connie kept Mags on a tight rein, his frown morphing into a suspicious glare. “You don’t know how important that horse was to ‘em. They’re gonna want him back, no mistake about that.”

Buck kept close to Mags, his ears pinned back and his tail flicking against his back legs as he walked. They say horses can sense mischief or plans going asunder, and I am a firm believer of that. Buck knew something was gonna happen, or try to happen. Soon, I wanted nothing more than the LC Ranch and its terrible food.

Connie dismounted and tied Mags just outside the tavern. “C’mon Kirschtein. Tie up your pony. We’re going inside to keep an eye on things. I wanna know how this plays out.”

“It ain’t our place to keep an eye on things,” I shot back, but dismounted anyway. “You’re jus’ being nosey.”

“Bein’ nosey has its benefits, Tenderfoot.” Connie waved me in, and I had no choice but to follow his mockingly formal bow.

The tavern was full to bursting with celebrating men who bet against White Face, and sombre groups of those who’d lost their money and were nursing a glass between the lot of them. It was a smoky place, with voices bumping into and overlapping each other until there was nothing but a mass of noise I couldn’t decipher. Girls in little more than undergarments waltzed through the maze of tables and chairs, leaning over and planting kisses against patron’s cheeks or sitting in their favoured customer’s laps with childish giggles. One particular couple were glued to each other’s lips, with one meaty hand reaching up under the girl’s skirt. I quickly looked away, my upbringing raising its ugly head and telling me this weren’t the place to be curious.

Connie directed me over to the bar and ordered two unnameable drinks that I presumed were whiskey for the way they burned my throat on the way down, and turned back to the room. “You see Jaeger or Bodt anywhere?” he asked.

I dutifully looked out for them, but in a mass of bodies like this I would’ve had no better chance if they’d been swinging from the lights. “No,” I said. “Where’d they usually go after a race?”

Connie thought for a moment. “Jaeger’s usually enjoying some female company upstairs, and Bodt… Bodt usually gets the job of lookin’ after the horses. But they just won a load of money and a prized horse. Jaeger won’t be able to resist walking about the place like some a gift from god.”

“Funny,” I said, “he ain’t got the height for a god, gift or no.”

Connie laughed. “Don’t you let him catch you saying that, he’ll have your guts for garters.”

I snorted. “Let him come and claim ‘em.” I took a sip from my whiskey and let the burn take me. I was growing to like the feeling, something I never thought I would. “They might not be here, but those Utes certainly are.”

“Huh?”

I nodded over to a corner, where a group of them were sat discussing something in low voices. They weren’t much different from the other men in the place; they all looked like they needed a drink. I’d read about the Native Americans of the West and how savage and cut-throat they were, but when I looked upon ‘em that day they didn’t look nothing like that. They just looked like heartbroken men who’d lost something near and dear to them – which White Face was, I suppose. Worryingly though, they also looked as though they were plotting.

Their plotting, however, was to come to an end. Connie’s prediction came true; Eren Jaeger came down from the upstairs of the tavern like a conquering hero, his head held high and a smug expression on his face of a man sated. The Ute, I saw, tensed when they saw him approach. “C’mon,” Connie urged, “we gotta get closer.”

“The hell we do.” I grabbed the edge of his shirt and yanked him back to the bar. “Don’t go stickin’ your nose into things that don’t belong to you.”

Connie rolled his eyes. I knew I was sounding like some sorta spoilsport, but I figured the quarrel was between the horse owners, not the whole population of Telluride. He listened to me, however; he scraped a barstool towards him to sit on, and perched atop it like a scolded child, arms folded and eyes boring into the backs of the Utes who had stood up on Jaeger’s entry.

He still had a girl on each arm, who wilted away at the sight of the Ute’s furious faces. Funny, he didn’t seem the type that girls would fall for; he was too short, too fierce looking, to warrant any sort of female attention I’d seen back home. Then again, I reminded myself, it was all the likelihood that he’d paid for the company and not been gifted it through free will. His brow furrowed at whatever the Ute leader was saying to him, and suddenly the nervous girls were forgotten. He dismissed them like gnats and focused his attention on the man a head or so taller than him.

It was all too obvious that they weren’t too happy with each other; Jaeger was gesturing at a paper he’d pulled out of his pocket rather viciously, which the Ute didn’t seem to like. The leader was trying to brush the paper aside, but Jaeger kept waving it in his face. I guessed that was the written agreement they’d made, proclaiming that whosoever won the race got the losing horse for their own. I turned to Connie and saw that he was transfixed on the exchange, his hand twitching on his holster. It was my turn to be scathing. “Really?” I asked. “You gonna shoot ‘em into shutting up?”

“No,” Connie defended, though his hand did stray. “You just... you just gotta be careful. Dunno what these Ute are up to.”

“Gotta be careful around white folk too, I reckon.”

Connie’s defence fell away and he shrugged. “Ain’t that the truth. You’ve been off ruining things since the beginning of time.”

At the moment Connie said this, chairs toppled over and the other two Utes, including the brave who had been riding White Face, rose to their full height and began to look mighty threatening indeed. Eren was falling back, his shouts finally reaching our ears. “Look, we won your nag fair and square! You know that as well as we do! Don’t be sore losers now, boys!”

The leader matched Eren’s shouts in volume. “We are taking our horse back whether you like it or not, small white man!”

“But we played fair! If you’d won, we would’ve handed Betty over!”

“Where is your famed jockey now, Mr Jaeger?” the Ute rider demanded, folding his arms against his chest. “He is nowhere, just like how a fraud would make himself scarce!”

“And what d’you accuse him of doing? Of riding a horse better than any of you ever could?”

“That’s enough.” A hush came over the bar. Everyone, it seemed, had been listening into the argument going on between the Indians and Eren. Everyone – including Marco Bodt.

He had just walked through the back door that led, Connie told me later, to the stables (just so he could be right in his assumptions about the two of them), and there he stood, arms folded and a frown crossing his face. He’d lost his hat somewhere along the way, and his hair was dark and stuck up at some angles you couldn’t get without a lady running her hands through it. He had the look of a boy who had just caught his parents fighting – a mix of betrayal, disappointment and confusion. He spoke. “Now, what’s all this I’m hearing about a dispute?” He let out a sigh before anyone could answer, and started to walk towards the group.

The Ute became restless at Marco’s approach, eyeing him up and down like they had violent thoughts in their heads, but as he grew near their resolve failed. The Ute rider especially was looking at him with an expression that showed he weren’t sure whether to fight or run. Marco clapped a hand to Eren’s shoulder and squeezed in a way that was very obviously telling Eren to shut up whilst he was still alive, and said something in a low, low voice to the Utes.

They bristled like porcupines, but Marco just smiled. As though it was some sort of magic word, the Utes got up and left; their half-finished glasses were abandoned on the table as they strode out, talking darkly amongst themselves. And just like that, the bar adjusted and merged back into how it had been before, with women cackling and men clinking glasses together. Connie grumbled about losing the sport before it had begun, but I still had my eye on the two men still stood in the corner of the room. Eren had said something in an undertone to Marco that made the edges of his mouth quirk up in something resembling a smile, but it was full of thought and sombreness. He was still following the Utes’ progress out the doors and into the cooling afternoon air. Another word from Eren sent the expression from his face as though it hadn’t been there at all, and he gave him a hearty shove. Eren stumbled back with a laugh, and all was fine and normal.

We left soon after that, Connie complaining of “Bodt being such a bloody peacemaker, I was looking forward to a bit of fighting!” but with me thinking of little more than the bunk I called my own and the upcoming work in the fields.

I didn’t take a single moment to worry about Marco goddamn Bodt and his life. Funny the way things turn out.

 


	4. Act 1, part iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean's first roundup goes about as well as you'd expect, he does some incredibly stupid things and comes face to face with someone who could shoot him dead pretty easy...  
> Yeah, no one said Jean was the clever sort. He gets a brain. Honest.
> 
> Thank you so much for the continued support, I hope you enjoy and please feel free to get in touch however :D 
> 
> As always I can be found on Tumblr or Twits if you have any questions or comments, or leave a comment here!
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Tumblr: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @purple_tealeaf

After the horserace, we had little time to ourselves. The season was turning; the summer sun still beat down upon our backs but the wind blowing in from the North turned the evenings a mite colder and the mornings a little bit darker. I continued to train with Connie, teaching Buck how to turn to every command and making me a better shot with the rope and the six-shooter. George let me have that old gun of his when I left for good, telling me it wasn’t much good for nothing out in the plains – according to him, that meant we matched. But after a bit of shine and practice, that old gun turned out to be pretty reliable indeed – and I like to think that I became the same.

Our time spent in Telluride became a distant memory as we slaved over the winter cattle pastures. We rode out there every daybreak and get to work pullin’ poisonous weeds and fixing fences. It was backbreaking work, but work I didn’t mind none. This was partly ‘cus, for the first time, I felt as though I had friends, the kind that wanted my company as opposed to merely putting up with it. Connie was very good at getting me liked; Thomas, Samuel and Boris started off defending me from the snide comments on my roping or my riding, and became my friends after a few nights of warden work and long rides. I was thankful; we were all boys out of time, in a place we wanted to be for adventure and adventure alone. No matter how much the others said they were there for the money, or for the drives or the women, it all came down to that. I wondered if they, like me, had been sat reading exploits of outlaws and bandits when they were kids.

After a great deal of bruising and blood, I was deemed ready for the bigger roundup. Pixis had been scattering hints amongst us like a farmer amongst chickens, telling tall tales about when he used to go out and ride alongside his workers. The others paid him little attention, but I ate up every morsel he’d let me swallow. Still, there were times when I lay in my bunk and listened to the sound of the boys all about me, and knew that this life weren’t about the stories you heard; it was about the stories you made.

“What really goes on?” I asked, as we were roused from the bunkhouse before daybreak with the clamour of pots and pans. “At the roundup, I mean.”

“Bit of a time to ask,” Samuel quipped, “Seein’ as we’re off today.”

“Ignore him,” Connie instructed, and I dutifully did so.

“Not much,” Thomas yawned, rolling over and snatching for his clothes. “We just gotta get out there, find the herd and drive them down to the winter pastures for the season.”

Connie took over. “It’s a hefty distance, but we’ll get there in a few days, I reckon. Ain’t nothing to worry about.”

“A couple days?” I frowned. “I thought we were bringing ‘em down here.”

Connie gave me a soft, slightly patronising smile. “We are. It’s where the herd is in the first place that makes the journey. And it’s gonna take us a lot longer to get ‘em back, too. Cattle ain’t the most punctual of beasts.”

We packed light, though Connie made sure to grab a pack of cards and a mouth organ to keep him entertained out on the plains. I slid a copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ into my pack, making sure to pack it down with my bedroll and additional shirts, and followed him out into the sleepy dawn. There were plenty of men in the bunkhouse, some of which I knew and spoke to and some I hadn’t, but they were all assembling themselves outside. I saw a few of them look me up and down, no doubt thinking back to the times when I’d been training with Connie (some of ‘em found it pleasant sport to watch me fall flat on my rear) and wondering why the hell I was in their number. I kept my head high and made sure to give ‘em as fierce a look as what I was getting.

I went to Buck, patiently waiting in the corral, and whistled through my teeth for him to come to me. Come he did, and immediately too, head up and ears pricked. He knew something was going on, that wily Mustang nature of his taking over from the more rational side, and as I slipped through the gaps in the fence and closed the gap between us, he butted his head into my chest with an affectionate _huff_ of greeting.

“Hey, Buck,” I crooned, brushing some of his forelock away from his eyes, “you ready for this? It’s a long haul, longer than we’ve done before. But you’re a good lad, you’ll get me there.” Buck blew in my face, which I hoped was an agreement, before allowing himself to be led out of the corral with nothing more than my hand in his mane.

We saddled up quickly, Buck remaining remarkably still when I settled his girth, and we were up and out before daybreak. Connie made sure to ride next to me, reining in his paint no matter how much she jittered and jigged beside us. “Seeing as you’re a tenderfoot, Kirschtein, you stay behind the herd,” he explained as we moved out. “We got three men leading the herd from the front, some to each side to make sure no stragglers get through, and then we got the people at the back to keep up the pace. We also got spotters a little farther out to watch for wolves or hostiles or whatever else might be lurking in these parts.” He pointed men out in turn, telling me who would be doing what. The more seasoned cowboys, the ones who looked as though they had always worked the land, were the ones leading.

“What are you gonna be doing?” I asked.

“I’m usually a side man,” Connie said, “but I said I would hang back to take care of the tenderfoot.”

I flushed under his wide grin. “I’m not some child to be looked after, you know.”

“I know. But I know what you’re capable of, and I wanna make sure you don’t go doing something stupid.”

“Y’know, I was dumb enough to think that was gonna be a compliment when you started out talking just now.”

“Told you. Dumb.”

I leaned over to smack him out of the saddle, but his paint flinched away and gave me a very haughty look.

We moved out as a single pack, our horses whinnying and jostling each other. The spotters were already fanning out to the outskirts of our party, and we kept in the formation we’d be using when we found the cattle. This, I was soon to find, was the easy part; the journey over rough terrain and long hours, though jarring in the saddle and weary on the horses, gave us plenty of opportunity to swap stories and talk amongst ourselves. Thomas and Boris rode alongside us for a little while, chattering about the next visit into town and how they were gonna spend their well-earned dollars, but Samuel was nowhere. When I turned in my saddle to look for him, I saw him spurring his scrappy bay cowpony into a flying gallop, tearing up the grass as he turned towards the outermost edge of the group.

I watched him go, vanishing to nothing more than a pinprick, before I lowered my gaze to the saddle and Buck’s gently bobbing head as he walked. “Samuel’s a ranger’s son,” Connie said without me having to ask. “He knows every patch of earth on this land. He’s always out on the fringes, spotting for us. He’ll be okay, and keep us plenty safe. He’s shot many a man in his time.”

The thought of this was alien to me. Samuel was our age, and knowing that he had ended the life of men years older left a strange taste in my mouth. Call it my Christian nature, but I didn’t take kindly to the thought of shooting a fellow man.

“Speaking of shooting,” Thomas chipped in, bumping his gelding alongside Buck, “did you hear about that whole White Face affair?”

“No,” I asked, still watching out for Samuel in my absent way. “what about it?”

“That Ute rider gone got himself killed.”

That got my attention. I turned in my saddle to gawp at him. “What? Killed?”

Thomas threw up his hands. “Ain’t nothing could be done about it. Apparently the Utes were trailing Jaeger and Bodt for a few days, since they had Betty and White Face in tow, and eventually they couldn’t take it no longer. That… that helper o’ theirs, fella called Daz, turned and shouted a challenge to ‘em.”

“Let me guess,” I said, my heart already sinking, “they didn’t take kind to being shouted at by some white boy.”

Thomas nodded. “Well, that Ute rider pulled out a Winchester and levelled it at ‘em. Some say he was aiming for the horse, since he figured if they couldn’t have White Face then no fella could. But Daz thought he was aiming for him, and he shot first. Blew the guy clean off his horse. Could’ve taken that one too, if the others hadn’t rode off.”

“Jesus,” Connie breathed. “I gotta admit, I didn’t know this Daz fella from Adam, and I don’t think Jaeger did neither. That’s what he gets for bringing a greenhorn into his work.”

“That ain’t the best of it,” Thomas said, gleeful that he had our undivided attention. “That Marco Bodt fella turns to Daz and smacks him so hard he loses a tooth. Tells him there was no need to shoot that Ute, no need to kill him, not over some horse. Daz argued back, Bodt took White Face from Jaeger and off he went, away from ‘em both. Couldn’t handle the sight of blood, some say.”

“If he’s running scared from a little Indian blood being spilled, he ain’t fit to live out here,” Boris said stoutly. “Better the Ute’s blood than his.”

Something about the way Boris said those words, like the Ute’s life meant less than Bodt’s, made me bristle. “Better no blood be spilt, I figure,” I replied, cool as I could. “Anger and loss are dangerous weapons. Makes you do dumb things, when you should know better’n that.”

Boris and Thomas were staring at me. Connie, to his credit, looked a little impressed. “Looks like we got us a poet in our midst, boys,” someone called from up ahead. The laughter that rippled through the group weren’t pleasant. It felt like cactus needles, sticking into me like I was a pin cushion. I ducked my hat lower over my eyes and just kept moving. Now more than ever, I had to show them that I could shoot my gun. Otherwise, they could have thought the worst; that I’d gone soft.

We pressed on.

* * *

The Colorado landscape around the LC Ranch was a creature all its own. The mountains loomed before us like the spines of a sleeping animal, never changing size no matter how close we got to ‘em and never seeming close enough to climb. The land was ever-changing, from lush grass plains to thick forest and dusty valley ground, and I learnt to read the whole of it. Buck took it all in his stride, often taking the bit between his teeth and taking charge over my clumsy direction and unsure heels. The spotters often galloped ahead to scout out the herd and come back to report. Turned out the herd was following the curve of the river, and slowly too. We would catch up with them in no time. Maybe, they said with hope in their voices, we wouldn’t have to ride for as long as they thought to reach the herd.

We set up camp along the way close to water, on a flat patch of ground with grazing for the horses, and enough room for twenty cowboys to sit around a campfire and share food. The rations were bountiful at first, but we got greedy and started to cut down as we drew further away from the ranch. The older cowboys dished out our food and ignored our groans of protests when they refused to give us more.

It didn’t think the hunger would bother me none; I was used to fighting for a good meal back home, so I figured the smaller portions wouldn’t do nothing to change my humour – how wrong I was. Turns out that when you’ve ridden all day, dismount saddle sore and with an ache in your belly, when you ain’t got the square meal you were expecting, you get mighty antsy.

On the fifth day I brought myself to the level of asking one of the older cowboys for seconds, to which they batted me away like some kinda gnat. I retreated with a grumble and a glower in their direction, but Connie just grinned at me. “Hunger’s got a nasty bite to it, ain’t it?”

I show him a fierce look, but said nothing. I picked up my bowl where I’d dropped it and resorted to mopping up the last of the juice with some hardened old bread.

“Bless ‘im,” Thomas said, patting me on the shoulder, “he gets all grouchy when he’s not got himself a full belly.”

“I do not!” I snapped, causing the others to snigger. “Just… seems like a dumb idea to have us eat so little before we even get to the herd.”

“You’ll want it more on the drive back, tenderfoot,” Connie said, “believe you that.”

I didn’t dignify him with a response; instead, I threw my bowl onto the floor with a last hateful look at the old cowboy with the ladle and stood up. “I’m going to see to the horses,” I announced.

Connie and Boris started crowing about me being in a mood, but once I started walking I didn’t even turn my head. There weren’t no point.

The horses were all tethered a little apart from us in case we made some kinda noise in our sleep they didn’t like. They were all bunched together, a small band sticking it out like they would if they were wild, and it brought a smile to my face. For the moment, the lack of food was forgot.

Buck looked up from grazing when he saw me get near. The journey was treating him well; in fact, he looked better now than ever. I ran a hand over his shoulder and down his leg, picking it up for inspection, and he let me do it without so much as a grunt of protest, though he did rest his head on my shoulder.

That was when I heard it.

It was a shuffle of shod hoofbeats, a little away from our little herd. For a while, I thought it was the spotters, come back for some rations – but then I remembered that none of their horses was shod. I dropped Buck’s hoof and straightened up. Come to think of it, no LC horse was shod.

From a steep incline, a horse was sliding down towards me. It was a tall, mighty thing, pale in the dying light with a barrel chest and neat white socks. It moved delicately, putting and placing its hooves like it was afraid of stepping on something, but the rider’s hand on its rein kept it from slipping. I watched the rider come, my hand twitching to my holster. My mind took flight and ran away with tales of horse rustlers and thieves, and back then I was in the mind to listen to those fancies. I glowered at him, but he kept on coming. He only stopped when he was a horse’s length or so away from us.

I brought my gun out from my holster and levelled it at the man’s chest. “Don’t you come no closer, fella.” Buck shifted nervously behind me, but I paid him no attention. “I don’t want no reason to be shooting you.”

I’d expected the rider to back off if he was smart or level a gun at my head if he was stupid, but he did neither. He simply dropped his reins so they draped low over his horse’s neck, rested one hand on the pommel of his saddle and the other on his thigh, and watched me. At least, I guessed he was watching – I couldn’t see his face. He kept his head down and his hat pulled low, and it didn’t look like nothing was going to change that. I took another step forward, and his horse threw up its head and lay its ears back.  

He made the reins taut between them again, and said with a degree of amusement, “I think it’s you who should stay where you are, kid.”

I kept my gun hand steady. “Why might that be, stranger?” I asked.

“Don’t want you getting kicked in the head.” He reined in his mare, though she chewed on her bit some and shook her head with bad temper. “She’s in season, she don’t like no one near her. ‘Specially someone who smells the way you do.”

I blinked. “Beg your pardon?”

The man lifted his head, finally, to reveal his face. He had a slight beard, though whether that was choice or the days he’d spent away from a razor it weren’t too clear. He was dirty, that was for sure; the land clung to him like it was trying to seep into his very skin, but his eyes were bright and welcoming in the way a snake’s would be to a mouse. He was older too, bout 30s or 40s I reckoned, with a look about him that suggested the world had bitten him and he’d bitten right back.

I squared my shoulders. “What you doing here?”

He fixed me with a gaze from those too-welcoming eyes and inhaled deeply. He smiled. “Your little gang over there haven’t bathed in a few days. Can smell you from over here.”

“You ain’t answering my question.”

The stranger smirked. “No. I ain’t, am I?”

I tried to draw myself up to my full height, which was difficult considering the stranger weren’t only on a horse but was also like some mythical knight with how tall he was. I steeled my misgivings and bit back, “If you’re here to rob us, you best move on. We ain’t got nothing worth stealing, but we got guns, we got ammunition, and we ain’t afraid to use it on the likes of you. Or any other outlaws riding these tracks, come to think of it.”

The stranger threw his hands up, reins and all, in surrender. “Ain’t no reason to be unfriendly there, kid. Them’s fighting words, for someone so young. Must be a greenhorn, first roundup I suppose.” He smiled. “You bringing in a herd?”

I glowered at him. “I ain’t telling you shit.”

“And yet here you are. Still talkin.” He smiled again, the dimples in his cheeks showing through the dirt as he lowered his hands. “Come on, Greenhorn. You ain’t the shooting type. I can tell. Your little friends, maybe one of them, but not you.” He lowered his head, eyes piercing into my chest with how fierce they suddenly seemed. “No. You’re something different. That’s why I ain’t shot you through the head already.”

The threat was softly spoken, barely there at all, but it was barbed enough to make me hesitate. Buck lowered his head to crop at the grass behind us, not at all worried by this strange man and his strange horse, but I was in the decision of getting back to the others, and getting back fast.

I wetted my lips and straightened my back, not realising I’d slunk away at the man’s words. “R-reckon you ain’t the shooting type, either,” I tried.

The man’s smile widened. “Reckon I am.”

I lowered my gun. There weren’t no point in threatening a man who had years of experience on me. The man nodded, as though he approved of the decision I’d made, but before he could get out his gun or say anything further, another voice called out, “Mike!” from the darkness further ahead. The man, Mike, sighed and lifted his head to the sky. He was watching the stars, I noticed, dancing in the pool of ink that was the night sky. “You should be careful, son,” he said. “There’s a lotta rain headed this way. Maybe a storm. Your cattle won’t take kindly to being pushed in the thunder and the lightning.”

Part of me wanted to ask him how he knew that, and thank him for the advice. The part I followed, however, told me to back off and stop talking to this stranger. And that I did. I turned back to Buck, to the horses and my campmates who were waiting for me. “Stay out of our way,” I hissed. “I may not shoot you but you’re right in thinking that someone else might.”

A throaty chuckle greeted my words. “I’ll be sure to bear that in mind, boy.”

I gave Buck a final pat, slipped my gun back into its holster and walked away, back down to meet the others. My heart was in my throat with every step, lurching at ever noise. He could’ve shot me, then. He could have raised his gun, levelled it at my back and shot me, without me ever knowing. I was nothing to him – a smart mouth greenhorn who took his job too seriously and threatened a man almost double his age. But he didn’t. When I plucked up enough courage to look over my shoulder, he’d vanished. Cream horse and all.

It weren’t an important meeting, all things considered; it’s one of those kinds of encounters that leaves you with a funny taste in your mouth but not knowing why that is. Only later did I found out that the man I had spoken with, had _threatened_ even, were none other than Mike Zacharias. He was a man known for branding maverick cattle and stealing horses. Why that were linked to the rest of my life remains to be seen.

I tried to forget about my little encounter, and succeeded for the days it took to get a positive report from the spotters. The cows were waiting for us where the scout had instructed, along the banks of the river. Connie let out a relieved sigh upon seeing them, and spurred his horse forward with a yell and a holler. I followed suit with a sharp whistle to Buck, who charged after the others like a warhorse.

The cattle were behemoths, giant chestnut stock that stood like great muddied statues across the plain. As we got nearer the bull lifted his head and bellowed, a noise that roused the others into standing, swaying their heads and returning his call with their own mournful ones. Their peace was shattered. We had arrived, and we were to take them back to the winter pastures.

For the cow, we were the biggest enemy they would face. We were to push ‘em around, to move ‘em when they didn’t wanna be moved, and tie ‘em down and burn brands on their flesh when they were youngsters. It wasn’t the sort of thing an animal, dumb as it was, was likely to forget. And I don’t believe for one minute that cattle are dumb. They’re wily, resourceful creatures, and know exactly when a man ain’t paying enough attention. They use that time to charge, or gore, or trample. And when they got that temper in their bellies, ain’t no way you’re getting them out of it.

I learnt this on my first roundup; I was unseated a few times by (thankfully) hornless cows who didn’t take kindly to my wrestling with their calves and forcing ‘em apart. Turned out that one of the golden rules of cowboying was not to get in between a mother and calf if you could help yourself – that, and avoid the horns. In future roundups and cattle drives, I saw horses gored to death by horns and cowboys crushed underfoot by a stampede of hundreds. I saw carelessness punished by a crippling, or a death.

Suddenly, it seemed that my quiet nature might be best suited to the cattle; Connie always said I had a calming way with the cows the like of which no one else in our group did. I would ride amongst them with my horse on a low rein, giving them quick once overs to ensure they weren’t lame or in the suffering way. If they were, I’d point it out to one of the more experienced cowboys who would separate ‘em from the herd and give ‘em the medication they needed. I stood by sometimes, watching the way it was shoved unceremoniously down their throats or how a wound was cauterised with a hot iron. But still, those beasts forgave me, and still allowed me sanctuary within their vast number.

Still, our roundup was going well so far; with a small army of cowboys guiding the cattle on and no branding to be done until we reached the ranch they was all too happy to get back to the LC. I rode beside Connie at the back of the herd, listening and learning. I watched the spotters race ahead to check out the lay of the land we were returning through and noted the way cowboys to the side of the herd were in control of direction with gentle gives and takes of pressure to the group’s flanks. We rode through the night to make up for lost time once, which damn near killed me, but we managed to make camp the day after.  

It was only in the morning that I noticed the man watching us from a distance, his horse’s golden coat catching the sun like a newly minted coin. Nobody else paid him any attention; they had thoughts only for the next stop, the distance we had to travel and the condition of the herd. Our spotters were far ahead, not supposin’ anyone would be near as stupid as to track us from so close by. They wasn’t to know there was rustlers on our trail – I didn’t know for certain, after all. But the man had that look draped about his shoulders, and the unshakeable arrogance made me bristle. I kept to my place behind the herd, but made sure my gun was loaded and ready to draw. I don’t think it would’ve dissuaded him had he wanted to strike, but in my head I was the one he was wary of, and not the other way round. To tell the truth, he made me nervous – but there was no way in hell I’d show it.

He followed us for miles, trailing behind on some hellbent mission (I assumed) to cause me fright. After the second night of this, with his campfire flickering in the distance like a mocking firefly, I turned to the other hands. “Connie.” He grumbled a response, half asleep in his sleeping bag. “Come here.”

He came, though looked extremely put out that he had. “Wossat?” he asked.

“You seen this guy?” I jerked my head in the fire’s direction. “He’s been on our trail since just outta the LC border.”

Connie squinted. “You sure? Never seen a fire before.”

I flushed angrily. I knew there’d been no fire before. I was certain that the man with the palomino was doing it to mock me, to prove a point. He was saying that there weren’t no way I was gonna stop him, so what did he care if he was in plain sight? “He’s a bandit,” I spat. “He’s been on our trail. He’s tracking us.”

That got the attention of the other hands. They all stopped what they was doing to come and look, the younger ones nervous but the older ones quietly assessing. Connie looked a little worried, but looked to one of the older hands for guidance. They were the veterans after all; they’d worked this land for so many years they were beginning to return to it in places.

One, a wizened fella called Samson, looked at me with an edge of pity in his gaze. “You’ve read too many books, kid. He’s a weary traveller, same as the rest of us. Might be following us ‘cus he’s lost out here. Everyone knows that cattle drives go to big cities eventually.”

I didn’t trust the man on the palomino as far as I could damn well throw him, and that weren’t far. I paid my fellow cowhand no attention, even if the others did, and kept my eye on the horizon. The spotters would come back; they only had enough rations to keep them going a day or so away from us. Once they were back, I thought, we would be far safer – after all, it was a requirement for the spotters to be good with a shotgun. My mind romped with the idea of the man on the palomino slitting their throats as they slept and stealing their horses, but I rid myself of such thoughts before I truly lost my mind.

The man, Mike, kept irritatingly close to us, not enough to rouse suspicion but enough for him to know the direction we was headed. The fire grew closer each night, inch by inch creeping toward us and the 500 head of cattle. It drove my sleep from me, though I was forced by my fellows to lie down and attempt some remnant of rest every night. _How could they not be worried?_ I wondered as I looked between every unconcerned face, every weather-beaten smile or wind-creased brow. The answer came upon me quickly – they didn’t care because they were not paid enough to care. And neither was I. That meant little to me; I was still gonna fight if the rustlers came about, even if the others ran. The thought of a fight sent a thrill up my spine, the familiar fizz of a childhood dream melding into reality, but there was a fear lodged there too. No wonder a kid like me, in the middle of an empty plain like that, couldn’t get no sleep.

It happened about six miles from our destination. That morning, like Mike said, a storm had blown in from the East and lashed us with rain and hail. In a matter of minutes, we was soaked to the bone and shivering. We was moving the herd slow, calling out to each other across the vast expanse of nervous, flighty animals. Our horses plodded along with their heads down against the wind, their eyes stinging with the hail, and my hands were getting purpled with the cold.

We made three big errors that day.

The spotters had come back for their rations but moved ahead of the herd again, out of sight and earshot. The cattle were restless, and though we moved them slow they were in the right mind to run from the hail that bit their bodies and nipped at their heels. Us hands had little in our heads but the thought of home, the beds that awaited us and the meals that weren’t salted beef or beans.

The biggest error we made, though, was that we stopped looking for danger.

It came in a bullet. The shot ripped through the sky and the ground inches from the lead horse’s hoof exploded into dust. The horses took fright, jumping and squealing. Buck near unseated me, but I had enough time to grapple with his reins and bring him back under control. The lead horse reared clean up, and the cows behind it shied away.

“Liddel you dolt, get those cows calmed down!” someone shouted.

Another gunshot, this time near Mags’ hind legs. Connie let out a shout as Mags leapt forwards to avoid it, and rammed right into the side of one of the cows. With an alarmed cry, the cow broke loose and charged away, soon vanishing behind the sheets of rain. The rest of them bellowed in confusion, the gentle pace lost as the horses around them exploded into panicked gallops, plunges and rears. More shots came, striking the earth and churning the ground into a quagmire. Buck was terrified, his limbs numb to any of my kicking or screaming as he wheeled himself about on his haunches to evade the shots, the kicks of the cattle, the hooves of the horses spinning past us.

That was when I looked up the crest of the hill above us.

I already guessed what I’d see there, and I weren’t disappointed. A single figure was cut against the stormy sky and through the roaring rain. His horse was stock still, barely twitching at the sound of gunfire. I had a feeling, that prickly kinda feeling, that he was watching me. I didn’t have to squint to know who it was.

Cursing, I broke Buck loose of the panicked herd and got him clear, fumbling for my gun. There were other riders riding up beside the man now, their horses tossing their heads and dancing on their toes like they was just getting started with the running. I gritted my teeth. That son of a bitch had a gang at his heels. That goddamned, rotten son of a bitch.

I clenched my jaw, and brought my gun up to my eye. I could do it, even through the rain. I could shoot that goddamned piece of dirt right out of his saddle, and he wouldn’t even know it happened. I’d put sick cows down before, shot ‘em square between the eyes and watched as their eyes lost the pain and their limbs stopped kicking. This weren’t no different, not really. But Buck was fidgety, and the rain had soaked me to the skin and made me shiver. And I didn’t wanna shoot the man. Not really. A lawkeeper I was back then, true enough – but I weren’t no murderer, even if I was defending my charges. Even if it was a cattle rustler I’d be putting in a grave.

“Jean, the herd!” Connie shouted.

My attention wavered enough for the man on the hill to turn his head and issue an order to the man beside him, lost in the roar of the rain. I turned in my saddle to see the cattle at the head of the group had broken through the small gaggle of spooked horses and riders trying to keep them in one place, and were beginning to run. My eyes widened. They were stampeding.

The men were coming from the hillside too, smacking lassos against their legs and whooping and hollering to get the cattle even more riled up. This was their technique, I knew; I’d read about it back home, as a kid with nothing but a head full of ideas. Rustlers would stampede a herd, cut away a few in the confusion and be gone before the ranchers knew what happened. But in this rain, in this _tempest_ …

One of the spotters rode up to me, his horse flecked with foam and sweat from how hard they’d galloped. I realised quick that it was Samuel. “There’s a ridge!” he shouted above the noise of the cows and the men and the rain. “Just up ahead, there’s a drop! The cattle are headed straight for it!”

I snapped my head to the front of the herd. The men were trying to keep pace, trying to turn them, but there weren’t no use. When cattle got an idea into their head, they ain’t prone to persuasion.

The rustlers didn’t appear to care none that the head of the herd was slipping out their grasp; the men coming down from the hill were shouting to one another, trying to cut away some of the cows near the rear – and getting bullets from the hands for their trouble. I saw two crumple like paper from their saddles, and one horse topple over with a shriek, legs pinwheeling as it went.

One rider was stood across from me and the spotter. He weren’t moving. The weather did most of the work disguising him, but from this distance I could see he had a bandana pulled up over his face, only his eyes on show. They were narrowed. Perhaps he’d realised the mistake too. Perhaps he was thinking it best to stop the herd, to take more of a prize. Then he turned his head and stared at me, stared at my panic, stared at my wide eyes and gaunt look. He seemed to understand too.

Buck jerked his head as I spun him around, shouting to get Connie’s attention. “I gotta head ‘em off!” 

“There ain’t nothing we can do!” Connie said, helplessly. Mags was plunging and spooking all over the place, her eyes rolling and wild. “Once a herd panics like this…”

“Slow the rest down as much as you can!” I ordered. “Stop the sons’a bitches getting any from here, I’m getting to the front.”

“You’re mad!” Samuel yelled. “One man can’t stop a herd like this.”

I looked at him for a second – just a second. And my mind was made up. I was getting to the front of that herd if it killed me.

I drove my heels into Buck’s sides and roared at him to bolt. Buck launched off his back legs and did exactly what I told him – he ran. I’d owned Buck for a year by then; I thought I knew his quirks and his disposition, his limits and his misgivings. That day, I was surprised. Buck didn’t run the way he always did; he _flew_ , his ears flat against his head and feet barely touching the sodden, boggy ground. I heard men shouting, but I weren’t sure if it was the cowboys telling me to quit or the rustlers warning their comrades that I was coming up on the cattle like a bat out of hell. I didn’t listen to any of ‘em. I curled into Buck’s neck the way I’d seen the men do, keeping as much weight off him as possible as we raced past the stampeding cattle. Everything became a blur, then; the rain that hit us both like stinging insects, the shouts and screams of the rustlers and cowhands, the enraged bellows of the cattle… I heard none of it.

All I heard was my own breath, and Buck’s too. I felt every stride right in my chest, every pull and push to get farther, flatter, faster. I put my trust in that horse to find the right path, not to stumble in any holes or start at a sudden noise and throw me. I knew very well I could die if I fell, and Buck too. We could break us both our necks and say goodbye to this world if we wasn’t careful; but I believed in Buck, this half-wild reckless thing, and so I urged him on, slapping my reins against his neck and hollering in his ear. And that damn beast listened.

We were catching on the lead cows, our path soon becoming clear. But that meant the drop was coming up quick too, and I was mindful to keep Buck pressed close to the herd. We would have to turn ‘em to the right – cattle, for some reason, ain’t in the business of turning left when they’re in fright – and we was getting close. “C’mon, bud,” I whispered into Buck’s mane. “Almost there.”

It was then, when we was coming up to the head animals, that I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. When I looked, I saw someone coming up behind me like he was riding the devil himself, his horse almost white with sweat and puffing like a steam train. I grinned to myself; someone else was mad as me. Made a change. When I sensed him coming up close to Buck’s flank I shouted over my shoulder, “Stay with me! We gotta sweep ‘em!”

The other rider said nothing, but I figured he’d understood, as he kept behind Buck and waited for my move. When I looked ahead of us, I saw the drop. Now I ain’t gonna lie to you, my heart leapt up in my throat and stayed lodged there, taking supper with my terror. Buck felt it too; he started to slacken his stride, throwing his head up and trying to fight the rein I had him on. But we was so close, so close to the lead bull I could reach out and grab his horns…

There was a gap between the cattle and the drop. If Buck and I could get ourselves wedged in between, could make enough noise or enough ruckus to get the cows running in another direction, we would be safe. I kicked Buck in the ribs, a fact I apologised to him later for, and leant close to his neck. “Just one more push, bud. C’mon, just a little farther.”

Now whether horses can listen or whether they can’t, Buck stepped up his stride just that little bit more for a little bit longer, and by a hair we got in between the lead bull and the drop, a stride or three out from where we was stood. The beginnings of thunder started to roll as I fished my gun from its holster, still in a neck-breaking gallop, and shot at the ground inches from the main bull’s feet. The cattle turned, passing me by in a huddle of sweat and rain and dying fear. The rider behind me shot too, his gun making those that weren’t convinced on my shot more than certain to follow orders.

We kept on them, that rider and I, hooting and hollering like madmen until the herd was all turning, all curling back into themselves in a great ball of bellowing, angered flesh. We shot our guns in the air once, twice, enough to keep ‘em moving away from the edge until the rest of the hands showed up. I was glad of it when they did; Buck was spent, and I didn’t want to push him no more than I had to. The spotters, on swifter mounts and with stricken expressions, took over with the coiling and pushed the herd back from the edge with shouts and whistles.

I let Buck slide to a stop and all but collapsed onto his neck, my breath suddenly coming to me in sharp, difficult rattles. I was an idiot. I was a goddamned idiot. Regret seeped into my bones as deep as the rainwater, but I couldn’t do nothing but suck in air and hope my lungs weren’t done for. Buck was shaking all over, the shock of the run taking over his legs, and I dropped from the saddle like a rock. “Easy now,” I soothed, brushing his coat clear of the foaming sweat that clung to him like cloud. “You did good, you did real good bud.”

Buck leant into me, his head butting into my chest weak as a kitten, and I took some water from my canteen for him to drink from my cupped hands. The rustlers seemed long gone now, made off with plenty of cattle no doubt but I couldn’t find it in me to care all that much. Not when I’d saved some from death. A stolen cow is one thing – a dead one is another matter.

I had forgotten about the rider until he rode up to meet me. His horse was the same way as Buck, wheezing out her breaths and her head snaking low to the ground. He stayed mounted though, kept his eyes on me and his hat pulled low. His mouth was completely covered by a dark bandana, black from the rain. I felt that horror, the kind that had so briefly departed me, return with a vengeance. “You’re one of them,” I hissed. I reached for my saddlebag, my hand still shaking, but the man’s horse took a step closer. I froze. “So, this is how it’s gonna be?”

The eyes seemed to glint with the thought of it. The man, after a moment’s hesitation, shook his head. He even moved his hands up, away from the guns resting in his holsters. He didn’t raise ‘em enough to be a surrender, you understand – just enough so I could tell he weren’t in for no funny business. He nudged his horse closer, she complying with a heavy snort, and stopped only when he was close enough to knock me with his knee. I glared up at him, wishing I had a quick hand and a better gun, but I didn’t move. A sickening feeling was turning my stomach flighty, but I refused to let it show. I just glared.

This seemed to amuse him, for he gave a short, throaty laugh and tipped his hat to me. “I ain’t gonna be shooting you today, kid,” he said, in a voice dimly familiar. “Good riding. Sure hope your payroll is worth it.”

And with a click of his tongue and a nudge of his heels, the mare moved off at a slow, steady trot, vanishing amongst the gaggle of cowhands milling about the herd and checking for any stragglers.

I thought about that man plenty of times on the journey back. He invaded my head like the rustler that he was, stealing up my thoughts and herding them away so only he was left. I weren’t sure what was so fascinating about him, for him to take up residence in my mind; none of the others even knew what gang it was, least of all anything about the man with the dark bandana.

But I knew. I remembered. And I hated that son of a bitch.

Above all, though, I hated that I knew that feeling in my stomach weren't no sickness of a physical kind.

* * *

We’d definitely lost some cattle, Connie informed me glumly, but we hadn’t lost as much as we would have if I hadn’t pulled my stunt at the cliff. That’s what it was called, a ‘stunt’. The other hands were impressed, I could tell they were – but saying a thing is stupid is often easier than admitting it was brave.

We’d ended up losing about 15 head of cattle, which weren’t enough for the likes of Pixis to worry themselves over, though for me it felt like a personal loss. We hadn’t paid attention. We had made mistakes. Mike Zacharias had gotten the best of us.

But it weren’t the same for us all; once we arrived back at the ranch, saddle sore and exhausted, Pixis greeted us like a father greeting a long lost son. More importantly, he promised us a meal worthy of champions and, to everyone’s joy, our wages. Sure enough, our supper that night weren’t rationed and weren’t dried or salted beef, for which I was grateful. Anything, even gruel, was better than seeing another hunk of dried meat. Our wage packets, however, weren’t the greatest.

“Another two and a half dollars for dragging a stinking herd of beef over some plains and over some mountains,” Connie complained, sinking down on his bunk opposite me for the night.

“Ain’t too bad,” I shrugged, pocketing the measly packet and returning to my book. I was almost done, and the plot was beginning to fizzle and die like the embers of a campfire. “We got this and lost some cows. Could be worse - could be working in the mines on those wages. At least we get to see the sky and get some sorta life for ourselves.”

Connie snorted. “You, Kirschtein, are a damn romantic. You know that? Galloping down a stampeding herd and happy with two and a half dollars for the trouble.”

I smirked. “Maybe I am. Beats feeling like shit about it all.”

“Well, small wage or not, I still need to buy new boots. Or get mine repaired. Either one. You need a new saddle, better start saving for that cus those ain’t cheap.” Connie ran a hand through his cropped hair and sighed. “I need to get my hair cut too,” he groused. “You should too, yours looks like a haystack.”

I twined some of the strands around my fingers, hesitating. Sure, my hair weren’t the neatest, but I didn’t like the idea of getting it all shaved off the way Connie’s was. “Perhaps I should get it cut a little,” I admitted.

It was Connie’s suggestion to get the underside of my hair shaved; he said it was to do with keeping cool when it got hot, but I figured it suited me plenty well. It was a little strange at first, the way the girls would stare as we rode into town, but I came to realise that it weren’t just my hair that changed things about me. The LC Ranch and the Colorado summer had moulded me into something resembling a cowpoke, and as Connie delighted in informing me, girls liked a good cowpoke. “It’s like a sport to ‘em,” he said one day in a bar. “They like seeing how many they can have in a night. Don’t just like our company neither; they like our stories.”

Stories. Now that was something I could do. They came fully formed to my mind whenever I stepped out onto the range, where I could see for an impossible mile and with nothing but the sky stopping me from just taking off and going anywhere I liked. I wrote to the folks back home about the land and the horses and the cows and made it sound like I was in one of those novels I loved reading so much. Maybe Connie was right – I was a romantic.

Still, it weren’t enough for Connie, and despite Pixis’s good nature and ability to keep us bedded and warm, he was ready to move on come the returning spring. “You’re coming with me,” he said, when I had the gall to look crestfallen. “I ain’t letting you outta my sight, Tenderfoot, not with your track record of learning so fast. Need to be next to you when you do something exciting.”

And so I did. We became partners of a sort, Connie and I, and we’d more often than not be seen riding the trails together, me with Buck and he with Mags, and the town of Telluride came to know of us as friends and men who could get you out of a jam should you have the right amount of money in your pocket. Soon enough, people began to respect us. I ain’t ever been respected before, not even when I was working with Hannes at his stables – and it fitted me rather nice. Shame that, despite my contentment, that it weren’t to last.

 


	5. Act 1, part iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean has a close encounter, learns the meaning of hardship and gets just that little bit colder in his heart. But don't you worry, he has so much more waiting for him...
> 
> As always I can be found on Tumblr or Twits if you have any questions or comments, or leave a comment here!
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Tumblr: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @purple_tealeaf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew it's been a while since I updated, right? Still, this is a passion project for me and I really do want to continue with it, even if no one is really reading it anymore (which I know isn't true, as I've had some wonderful comments from some truly lovely people on previous chapters). Support is needed now more than ever! But rest assured, I'm still knocking away at this AU because I love it, I love Westerns and I love Jeanmarco. 
> 
> Love to you all! Lars x

Even now, I reckon I could’ve spent my life as the wandering kind of cowboy.

Some boys weren’t cut out for it; they came to the West expecting a life of adventure and wild chases, and were none too happy with what they found. I however, settled into the life like a foot in a well-worn boot. A year, two, went by, and with it went my greenhorn nature. I became the one the beginners came to, the one who men stopped and tipped their hats to as I came into town. Connie and I travelled far and wide, from New Mexico to Montana, picking up jobs for the seasons where we could. The LC was always good for a winter stopover or the autumn roundup, and Pixis was always happy to have us back. Reputation, it turned out, talked a better game than experience sometimes. Being a wanderer appealed to my nature; I didn’t wanna stay in no place too long, and there was plenty of work for a cowhand like me anywhere I liked. Every time I set off for pastures new, I had that same flutter of excitement I’d had as a fourteen year old stepping off the Colorado train, and I hoped to never lose it.

At some point, Connie and I broke off – he had a girl in a town, and I understood that he wanted to try the settling life – but I kept travelling South, where I picked up a job with a cattle drive from New Mexico to Montana. It was just another job, another handful of bucks in my pocket. Little did I know what it would lead to.

It was a job that took six months, and a tiring six months it was sure to be too. Buck, an animal in his prime by this point, stayed true to my spur and didn’t falter none on the journey, but with fifteen thousand head of cattle and a small army of riders, we couldn’t afford to do no faltering.

I didn’t mix with the others all that much; I stayed on the outskirts, keeping close to the horses and reading one of the many books I’d brought with me for the trail. Men mocked me for it, saying that my small library was weighing down Buck’s gallop, but I paid ‘em no attention. I ain’t the sort to bother speaking unless I have something important to say, and these men weren’t the overtly friendly sort. I’d met a few in the town they’d been driving the cattle through, looking for new hands, but none of ‘em had really wanted to speak all that much, so I played ‘em at their own game. So yes, I kept to my own, cept for the occasions when someone would come get me to ride around the cattle. With a herd so large, we needed a good many men to keep the animals calm, and I’d been picked out immediately for the job, since I were quiet and prone to just doing what I was told.

The night I met _him_ , I’d been asked to keep watch around the perimeter. I’d been asleep when they had come to call, but I leapt aboard Buck bareback with a grumpy yawn and no word of complaint. The herd watched me approach. These cattle, pied like jesters and more antsy than usual, shifted out of my way as I pushed Buck through them, sweeping my gaze over them as I rode.

“They’re a wee fidgety tonight, kid!” one of the other cowhands shouted to me. “Best got a good set of lungs on you – the heifers like a sweet voice.”

There was a break-out of squawking laughter around the campfire. I fixed them with a sour look and rode on. I’d seen all of them do it. They walked along the herds crooning like mothers calming a sleeping babe, and the cows seemed to like the sound of it. I’d done it in the past, of course I had, but not to such an audience. Connie had been there to shut up anyone ready to mock me, but he weren’t here now. I sighed. They were right though; the cows were nervous, their heads swinging from one side to the next like pendulums. Perhaps they’d seen a coyote, I wondered, or a wolf. The rangers would do their job. The predators wouldn’t get near the herd, least of all something as small as a coyote. Still, that weren’t gonna settle the cows. I thought of something, anything to sing. The men were waiting, some having dropped their spoons into their bowls of supper in preparation to listen. I gritted my teeth. Damn them to hell. I weren’t good at doing it when they were so obviously watching.

I spun Buck around and began to mill amongst the herd, thinking hard. Then, a song came to me; a soft one, one I’d heard in my ear from an over-enthusiastic saloon girl and one I’d used before to great effect. I drew breath, ignored the very real presence of men watching me, and began:

‘ _Down in the valley, the valley so low_  
_Hang your head over, hear the wind blow_  
 _Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow_  
 _Hang your head over, hear the wind blow_  
  
_Writing this letter, containing three lines_  
 _Answer my question, will you be mine?_  
 _Will you be mine, dear, will you be mine?_  
 _Answer my question, will you be mine?_ ’

I didn’t sing too often, as I often got teased for sounding like some soulful lady, but since my voice had broke and my temper too I figured it weren’t too bad. No one jeered. No one laughed. I sang softly, my burning cheeks thankfully invisible in the dying light. I turned Buck in a slow circle as I reached the edge and began to trace the perimeter of the shifting, restless cattle. I passed another cowboy in the opposite direction, singing his own soft song about a love lost and a tragic tale, but I didn’t stop my own gentle, rambling ballad.

The younger animals bunched around each other and flicked their tails to rid the insects of their prizes as I passed them, whilst the older cows and bulls gave a lowing refrain to the song. Buck lowered his head too, a tired snort rippling through his body as I gave him a reminding nudge to keep moving. It was a short song, little more than a few lines stretched across a tender tune, but I kept going, and kept repeating.

As I neared the men again, I had almost finished the song for the fifth time.

_‘Write me a letter, send it by mail_  
_Send it in care of the Birmingham jail,_  
 _Birmingham jail, dear, Birmingham jail_  
 _Send it in care of the Birmingham jail_  
  
_Roses love sunshine, violets love dew_  
 _Angels in Heaven know I love you_  
 _Know I love you, dear, know I love you_  
 _Angels in Heaven Know I love you…_ ’

They were all still sat around the campfire, their faces lit in some sort of primal relief that gave them the semblance of creatures not quite human. I stopped my song, and threaded Buck’s reins through my fingers, refusing to look at any of them. I weren’t gonna rise to any of their taunts or teasings. One of the men stood up as I got close, but didn’t say a word. I halted Buck before we reached the campfire, and glared down at them all. “There. I did as you asked. Now will you let me alone and let me look after these cattle?”

Someone whistled through their teeth. Another nodded. Another mumbled, “sure,” without looking up from his coffee. I ignored the figure who had stood up and turned Buck back to our slowly circling vigil, my face still ablaze with what I’d done. A love song. Of course it had to be a love song. I hadn’t even thought of what it was ‘til I’d started singing it, but now they were sure to quiz me on where my girl was. My painfully imaginary girl.

“Begging your pardon, but may I ride with you?”

I started. Somehow, a man had ridden up alongside me. The horse was shifting a little restlessly under him, but he was keeping it steady with nothing more than a short click of his tongue and a pressure from his knees. I knew this because his arms were folded across his saddle horn, and he was gazing at me with a great interest, like I was a book waiting to be read. The light of the fire was too far away to pick out all the features that made up this stranger’s face. All I could see was that he was tall, seein’ as he had to lean close to his horse’s neck to talk to me, and his shoulders were a broad and strong sort, made from swinging calves over them or from hauling hay. Part of the driving party, I decided. So they were going to poke fun at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Sure, just… don’t talk too much.”

He gave a breathy laugh and reined his horse closer. “Well, that’s quite a demand there, seeing as I came to keep you company.”

“I don’t need no company. Thanks for the concern.” I nudged Buck into a walk and didn’t look back. Not looking back had done good for me so far, after all.

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused some kinda offense, kid. It weren’t an intention of mine.” He gave another chiding click to his mount that appeared to settle the argument between the two of them. “Just wanted to say… that song you sang…” He paused. “Well, it was beautiful was what it was.”

I was about to snap at him, to tell him to shut up and go back to where his cronies were laughing at my expense, but something stopped me. There was no humour in his voice, nor a shaking to his shoulders like he was trying to hold back laughter. I frowned. He was serious? I swallowed my nicely bruised pride and nodded. “Why, uh, thank you.”

“Quite alright.” His voice had a gentle edge to it, soothing me like he would a nervous horse. “You ain’t from this ranch, are you?”

I relaxed a touch. Work. Work was good. That way I didn't need to feel so nervous - because he _was_ making me nervous. “Not yet. Got picked up in New Mexico, when you were driving the herd through. Heard tell that you wanted extra hands.”

“The bosses might not pay you.”

I shrugged. “Well, they’d be making a mistake if they didn’t. I’m good at what I do, and I work hard. Ain’t no reason for them not to pay me.”

“I can sure see that. Never seen someone able to sweet talk a bunch o’ cows so quick.”

I glared in his general direction. “Like I said. I’m good at what I do.”

“I ain’t denying that, kid, not at all.” We continued to walk around the herd, listening to the screeching cat-cries of the cowboys opposite us, and my spiked suspicion around the stranger began to fade away. Maybe it was the rhythmic motion of the saddle, or the hoofbeats of our two horses matching for a moment before stumbling out of order again. The other man cleared his throat first. “You ain’t from New Mexico either, are you?” he inquired.

“Who’s asking?”

“An interested party, that’s all.” I could feel the smile in his words. “You’re from further North. I can tell by the way you ride.”

“And how, exactly, do I ride?” I asked.

He paused for a moment, thinking, before he answered, “you ride like the gentleman do, with your back all straight and your hands all rigid. You don’t slump like the riders down South.”

“Mighty insightful of you,” I retorted, rocking back in my saddle just to prove him wrong. “But I don’t ride like this ‘cus I come from the North. I ride like this ‘cus I’m tired, and slumping makes my eyes droop.” I shot him a look. “Better luck next time, trying to impress.”

Far from insulting him, my retort made him laugh. “Well, ain’t you the spike of a spur. Knew a horse like that before. Betty, her name was. Sharp as a tack and snapped like a gator.”

I jerked awake. _Betty_ _._ That was where I’d heard the voice before.

Telluride.

“Marco Bodt,” I said. “That’s who you are, ain’t it? The horse racer?”

The figure was silent for a moment, as though surprised I'd remembered. Then he dipped his hat, nothing more than a silhouette in the dark. “The one and the same. Nice to meet your acquaintance, Songbird.”

It weren’t the voice, I realised, that I’d expected to come from the boy who gentled broncs and smiled like he was going to devour you. It was soft, and earthy, and almost welcoming by the way it stretched out those vowels in the typical Utah twang. It was the sorta voice girls could get ‘emselves lost in, with no hope of ever getting out unscathed. It was also the kind that promised men many things, and didn’t necessarily deliver on them.

I kept my head down, and focused on the cows we were tending. They were what we were here for, after all. “I heard about the argument with the Ute back in Telluride, Mr Bodt. Heard tell about that brave who got shot by one of your men.”

This, apparently, weren’t the right thing to say. He stayed quiet for a mighty long time, and in some moments I thought he might have vanished into the shadows from where he’d appeared. If I hadn’t have heard the hooves and his horse and the creak of saddle leather, I might have believed it. His being quiet was fine with me; I still had my job to do.

The moon was peeking over one of the clouds that had been hiding it so well from our eyeline. With no moon, the land was a dark cloak with nothing to pierce it – not even a campfire would give us much light. There was something about the wilderness, out in the middle of nowhere, that made things seem impossible to control, to tame. If the place wanted to be dark, then dark it would be. There weren’t no changing it. There weren’t no moulding it, neither. Weren’t never about controlling the land, not to me – it was all about living with it, understanding it as a separate creature to myself and respecting it.

When the moon did appear, it cast a faint silvery light over the sleeping cattle and resting cowboys. It also lit up our outlines, me and him, cut us out of the background like we were paper in a scrapbook. Marco weren’t looking at me; he was looking up at the sky, looking at the small peppering of stars we had to look at tonight. His profile, though younger, reminded me of the stranger on the palomino that had stalked the herd all those years ago, like some sorta wild cat.

I was sure Bodt weren’t gonna respond to what I’d said, that he didn’t care to think about the warrior who’d been killed over something as little as a horserace, but as I rolled my eyes and spurred Buck into a trot, he called out after me, “It’s all lies, you know. Whatever you heard. Whatever they say I did.”

I stopped. I spun Buck around on his haunches, and raised an eyebrow. “Is it now?”

“I ain’t a killer,” he said, with a conviction that cut to the bone of me, “and I sure as hell wouldn’t let no man of mine go around shooting someone who didn’t deserve it.”

“So that brave deserved it, did he?”

“Now, don’t you go twisting things, Songbird. You know that ain’t what I was saying.”

 I scoffed. “You don’t have to go justifying your actions to the likes of me.”

He let out a sad little laugh, and shook his head. “Kid, you’re exactly the sort of person I need to go justifyin’ myself to.”

I wanted to ask what he meant by that, but a piercing whistle made both our horses jump. Bodt reacted immediately; swinging his mount away, he turned back only to look upon me with a smile that seemed almost wistful, before digging his heels into the horse’s flanks and charging away with a yip and a whoop.

I asked the others about him the next day, but none of them knew who I was talking about. Even when I described him, mainly from the hazy horseracing memories back in Telluride, they all looked puzzled and shook their heads. “You’ve been out in the sun too long,” one of them said to me, as I fell back in line with them behind the herd. “There ain’t no Marco in this here operation, and there weren’t one that signed up with us when you did. You’re seeing things.”

“Ghosts on the range,” his companion said, nodding sagely. “Happens to the best of us, kid. You think you see something, and you don’t.”

Only when we drove the cattle back to the N Bar N Ranch in Montana and finished the arduous job of counting them did we realise that we were ten head of cattle lighter, and I realised exactly why no one knew who Marco Bodt was.

* * *

The N Bar N was a big ranch, bigger still than the LC in Colorado. It held over sixty thousand head of cattle at any one time, as well as a barn full of prime horseflesh and sheep for wool and meat. It had been ran by two brothers once upon a time, but now the mantle fell to Mr Keith Shadis, an ex-military man who had escaped the war with a bad limp and a temper to match, and decided to go into the beef business. And what a business it had become for him. He took a little convincing when I rode in with his usual mob of cowboys, but after being vouched for by a couple of more understanding folk he let me be.

The place was far bigger than I was ever used to, but it meant that I was often drifting between different jobs inside the ranch, be it branding cattle, driving them out to pasture or breaking horses. The life was never dull, never monotonous, and I felt as though I truly could stay there for years and never get that itch that hunted me all my life. I missed Connie, sure, but the men I rode with at the N Bar N became friends of mine instead of merely workmates, and the missing feeling soon ebbed away. I still thought of Connie, though, and the LC Ranch. It had been my nursery, there under the shadow of the mountains, and I have to say I thought upon those months favourably. N Bar N was the big deal, the deal I promised myself it would be, and I took the time to write to Ma and Samanna about my good fortune.

However, something still plagued me. Like it or not, my mind tended to wander to that first drive, under the moonsilver and the heavy cloud. I thought about the man who’d called me Songbird for singing some stupid ballad, and then disappearing like some sort of phantom.

I hadn’t told Shadis about Marco, or about how I was certain he was to blame for the loss of ten cattle – but I didn’t feel it were my rightful place to go doing something like that. A part of me, some small and adventurous part left over from when I was a kid, wanted to see him again. Just to see what he was up to. Just to see if he was still riding the right track, or going down the way of the outlaw. Even that was an exhilarating thought to my childish side; if the likes of Jesse James had ridden into the ranch any day, any time, you bet I’d have taken up my gun and begged to be brought along with ‘em. Call it foolish as much as you like, but I would’ve done it, and it was that part of me that wanted Marco to appear again, just to call me Songbird and tell me about some other adventure he’d been going on.

I saw him again, sure enough, but it weren’t no happy occasion.

See, there’s a knack to cattle ranching that includes a mighty amount of risk to the rancher and the cowpokes trusted in looking after them, ‘specially out West. The summers are harsh and biting in Montana and Colorado and Wyoming and all suchlike places; they beat down upon your back without mercy and without fear, and they leave you with a dry throat and dusty clothes. Then comes the winters, and they are harsh in their own way. Snowfall, blizzards and ice can make short work of herds grazing out on the range, and if they ain’t taken care of, well, you might as well kiss ‘em goodbye. Us cowboys, we wait for what’s called a Chinook wind, the kind that comes up from the South and warms the snow enough to melt it in the Spring. We rely on it ourselves to keep us from freezing in our saddles, and we rely on it for our paycheck. The boss ain’t likely to pay if half his herd are dead in the snow.

In the summer of 1886, the heat was brutal and long. It stripped the land of greenery, and the cattle struggled to forage a living amongst the parched earth and thirsty slopes. Those who knew the land better drove the cattle to places that always had grass, but there were plenty of men who knew the land and only a few plentiful spots. It caused a lot of fighting and herd-mingling, meaning we often came back with more cows than we left off with. It was a time where my quick draw came in handy; I was the quickest to react in any battle for territory, and the first to drive my bullet into the earth at the rival’s feet. I went out on plenty patrols ‘cus of this, and always came back the victor. We caught ourselves wishing for the winter, when the cold would set in and the water would flow freely.

We shouldn’t have wished so hard, I reckon.

The winter came in a blast and a scream, the snow pelting us like pebbles as we manoeuvred our way through the herds, driving em down to the main pastures with shouts and yells. They were quickly drowned out by the roaring of the winter wind, and we lost a fair few cattle in the first few weeks of the blizzard. Cows have a remarkable way of finding places to die; they fall into ravines, or run over cliffs, or break their legs on rabbit holes. They’re smart to cowboys, but dumb to their elements. If we could tell them what was to come, I have a feeling they’d all have jumped into the ravines.

All I can say is we did our jobs. We moved the herd, the better part of sixty thousand, down into the winter pastures. And then we walked away. We took to jobs around the ranch house, or went into town for warmer activities. But the blizzard didn’t stop. There were a usual snowfall for a few weeks, a period of cattle scraping a living in the snow, then the Chinook wind would blow through the country and melt it all. But there weren’t no grass to be scraped, nor feed to be swallowed. We couldn’t get out there, even if we wanted to. I rode past the fence bordering our pasture during that winter, wrapped in all furs and Buck shivering like a colt in the snow, and I saw the way it piled up against the pillars and posts. The snow was deep underfoot, too, and tickled Buck’s underbelly in many places. Ain’t no way we could get to the herds, no how. The cows stayed put, and we started worrying. The Chinook Wind, the older cowboys would say, would come soon. It had to. It was the way it had always been.

But the summer had killed the grass we kept for hay and fodder, and the winter weren’t relinquishing its hold on Montana any time soon. Something that usually took weeks took months. My friends waved it off, said it was a little unusual but it weren’t nothing to concern ourselves with. The older cowpokes didn’t look so sure. It was those men that I trusted, and it was those men that made me worry.

By the fourth week, I couldn’t get Buck out of the corral. The bolt was frozen shut, and he wouldn’t come to me. I watched, and waited, and hoped. It weren’t just about the cattle no more – it was about Buck, and the other horses stuck in the corral with no way of getting to good food. Me and a few others smashed the ice covering their water trough as often as we could, but we were powerless to the monster that ravaged the land we’d sought to make our own. None of the younger cowboys laughed about it no more. They didn’t have much humour, when it was their animals starving to death outside.

I spent many a restless night up at the corral, cloaked in as many animal skins and coats as I could, watching Buck struggle through the elements. I hoped, bargained with and begged any God I could think of to keep him from succumbing. I hoped that my being there would give him some sorta inner strength – to know I was there with him, fighting with him, might be enough. I needed him to pull through. I needed him to be okay.

When the Chinook wind finally blew through, none of us wanted to go to the pastures. I already knew the result of the winter. I’d seen Buck sink to his knees a few days prior, clouds of warm air escaping his nostrils like small chimneys, and I’d seen him go down. He hadn’t gotten up again. The other cowboys approaching the corral pushed through the sludge of snow to get to their own horses.

Some of them, shivering against the fence posts, had survived but only just; their ribs were prominent and their breathing was wheezy and laboured, but they were still standing. I clambered over the corpse of a once-fine bay mare to get to Buck, his buckskin coat matted with snow and sludge, and fell to my knees. I ran my hand over his chilled flesh, my fingers numbing to the cold. He didn’t lift his head to me. He didn’t twitch. He didn’t do a goddamn thing. He was cold – too cold. My hope, feeble though it had been, crumbled at my feet.

I sat there in the snow, in the sludge and the mud, and cried over that horse. I ain’t too proud to say it. I cried over that goddamn mongrel from my cousin’s farm, part civil and part wild. I cried over his knobbly knees, his coarse matted mane, his gentle nudges and irritable grunts. A hand laid on my shoulder, and I fancied the voice that accompanied it was as shaky as my hands. “We’re sorry, Jean. We know how much that horse meant to you.”

I gritted my teeth and pressed my head against what remained of Buck’s proud neck. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but that gelding was a link back to my family. He was the last knot of a swiftly unravelling thread that connected me to the Kirschtein name, and now he was gone it felt as though that last thread was cut clean. I rose to my feet an orphan, and cold as the snow that was settling around Buck’s body.

Our worst fears were confirmed for the cattle. The winter pastures unfolded a drama that played out across the territories; cattle, piled on top of one another, their corpses bloated and rotting as the snow melted. Some had died where they had fallen, one with its head propped on the top of the fence as though waiting for the hay that was never to come. Others looked like they’d been attacked or scavenged by wolves. We didn’t just see the death of the cattle, as we all gazed open-mouthed and silent at what greeted us. No – we also saw our jobs, our contracts, our wages, up in flames.

The men in the cities who crunched the numbers said that ninety percent of cattle died that winter. That’s nothing but a number to those kinda men, who sit there and fold their newspapers and shake their heads about what rotten luck the men out West were having.

They never saw the corpses. They never saw the remains of frozen rangers, who’d stayed out to keep an eye on the herds. They never got to see the crowds of cowboys laid off and drifting from town to town looking for work.

I did. I was one of the poor bastards.

All of a sudden, there were more cowboys in the territory than there was cattle, and there weren’t enough space for us all on the still-tender ranches. I didn’t blame Shadis for dropping me the way he did; it was just good business. I bartered passage on the back of a wagon back into the nearest town, and then bargained for a horse. The only mount I could afford was a bad tempered little brown Mustang with a nasty look in its eye, but I paid up and rode out all the same. I had places, I told myself. I had friends in places. They would look out for me. I could work for them, no problem.

When the second month passed with no job and no prospects for one neither, I started to think there was a bit of a problem.

It weren’t that I was bad at my job; I was damn good at it, and had often been told so. I was now seventeen and a fully fledged cowpoke with experience and smarts to outlast many of them, but there was one thing I didn’t have – anything to lose. Some of the men fighting for jobs had families. Me myself? I was some young vagabond from Pennsylvania with a chip on my shoulder and nothing to keep me rooted. I didn’t have a hope in hell. One rancher told me to go back to that place, back to the factories and the mines, so’s I could actually get some money to my name. That was something I couldn’t do, no matter the situation; I was too damn proud, and didn’t want my family thinking me a failure. So I pressed on, brushing aside every dismissal like it was nothing and trying my best to ignore how light my saddlebags were getting.

I passed through South Dakota, a place I’d gone once before with Connie in tow with no luck. The cowboys there were local, and didn’t want no wandering kid snooping about. I headed back to Colorado with a rising sense of panic in my breast. I was forced to start selling stuff I didn’t mind being rid of along the way, which included some of my books and a nicely gilded lighter I’d bought with my first wage. They kept me going for a little while, but not enough to sustain me. I stopped renting rooms, started setting campfires just outside the town perimeter and sleeping under the taunting, winking stars.

It was my lowest moment, curled up under my saddle blanket and shivering just a few feet away from a warm bed I couldn’t afford and food that would soothe the snarl in my belly. It’s a funny thing, desperation; it’s a little worm that crawls into your head and starts to eat away at your common sense ‘til you got nothing left, ‘cept that urge to stay alive and stay prosperous. Suddenly, no job seems too low to sink. My pride, strong though it was, didn’t keep me warm at night. It wouldn’t let me go back to Phoenixville – but it did allow me to take a few small jobs working for board and nothing more. It beat roosting out in the open where wolves or Natives could’ve taken me, but it was little more than labour, washing dishes in the saloons or keeping an eye on patrons of the bar when they were looking a little out of sorts. I moved on quick, and with me went my pride.

There weren’t no method in my travels; I just went to the places I knew from when times were good, when the cattle were speckling the hillsides and we could get a good living from those who employed us. I was aching for the open skies and the rolling plain, and I wanted nothing more than to get back to that. Some would say this was when the spark of the outlaw flared in me, but that came later.

By the time I rode into Sundance, Wyoming, I was close to collapse. I’d ridden my horse hard and without rest for days, and I’d been forced to sell my saddle in the last stop I’d made along the way. I hadn’t eaten in four days, hadn’t drank in two, and I had nothing left to give. I was gonna die out in the wild, I’d made my peace with that fact, and the only thought that kept spinning around my head was how my family would find out about me. More questions came about after that. Would my bones be picked clean by buzzards? Would someone find me and give me a proper Christian burial? Would I become a ghost, doomed to wander the expanse of the plain with a bad-tempered horse for all eternity? I weren’t sure of any of those answers, but then again I hadn’t exactly been thinking clear.

I wetted my cracked and bleeding lips and urged my horse on further, pushing it to its limit. It didn’t take too kindly to that, and when I dug my heels into its sides to incite a lope the damn animal put its head down between its forelegs and gave a magnificent buck that sent me sprawling. I bit the dust with a grunt and a groan and didn’t get up again. I saw my horse wander off and start to crop the grass beside it with a grumble, but couldn’t bring myself to reach out and grab its trailing reins. I coughed away the dirt collecting in my lungs and rolled onto my back, squinting at the sun that sat so mockingly in its endless sky.

This was it, I reckoned. This was how I died.

I closed my eyes, still coughing, and snatched blindly for my reins. If I was going to die, then I’d be damned if my goddamned murderer was going to get away with it to go wander the mountains. There was a shuffle of hoofbeats as my horse startled, but I hissed, “You ain’t going nowhere, you fatheaded pig!”

I heard the damned thing give a snort, as though the very sight of me was enough to disgust him. I didn’t care if I disgusted him – I disgusted myself, lying there in the dirt willing darkness to take me quickly and mercifully.

But I had done all I could; I’d played the game the way I thought it should be played, and I’d lost. If my bleached bones acted as some sort of warning to other bright-eyed Pennsylvanian boys, then maybe it would be worth it. I closed my hands tight around my reins, committing the feeling of my nails digging into the skin of my palm to memory, and slipped off the edge I’d been teetering on for so long.

I weren’t sure what happened after that; I remember a hand grabbing me, of someone pulling me up and trying to slap some life into me. I felt the broad back of my horse, and the jerky way he moved when he didn’t want to do something. I remember rising up from the depths of unconsciousness to see the world moving slowly by, the great burnt plains seemingly endless in whatever journey I was being taken on.

During these times, I could feel everything; the rough press of my saddle blanket against my cheek, and the steady crunch of hooves turning up the thirsty ground. I wanted to move, wanted to sit up and resist whatever it was that was going on, but then it would seem like far too much effort and I would sink back into a reverie, a waking dream that I was unsure I would ever wake from.

When I slept, I dreamt of green valleys, and of cows that sang their own lullabies.

* * *

I awoke to the sound of chickens.

Knowing that chickens weren’t typically found wandering the vast emptiness of the Wyoming wilderness, I found it in me to stir from sleep and open my eyes – and almost wished I hadn’t, for I was near blinded by the sunlight.

There was only one place it seemed to be streaming through in wherever I’d woken up in, and it happened to be right into my face. I blinked furiously, and got attacked by a bout of coughing from how dry my throat was.

“Ah! You’re awake!”

“I thought for sure we had a corpse on our hands.”

“Guys, c’mon, give him some room.”

The voices all broke apart and drifted into one in my haze, and when I tried to open my eyes again I saw that I was greeted by a small group of ranch hands. They were stood over me with matching expressions of concern, and then the smell came to me. Stale. Dusty. A little leather?

A bunkhouse, I realised. I was in a bunkhouse.

I struggled to sit up, but every muscle of mine seemed starved and wailing, and my arm ended up giving way. One of the hands twitched forward, but got held back. “He ain’t a pup, Armin,” the other snapped. “Let him get up on his own.”

I hadn’t ever felt this weak before; I was always the strong one, the kind who grumbled about having little food on a trail but never breaking apart because of it. It was embarrassing, the way I had to try a few times to sit up and every time lost the strength halfway there. When I finally managed it, the gloom of the bunkhouse still made it hard for me to see, sunbeam be damned. “Where…” I swallowed painfully, even the act of talking apparently hard. “Where… am I?”

One of the hands stepped closer. He was the one who’d been held back before, and now he was closer I could pick out a few discerning features. He was short. He was blonde. He had long hair. That was as far it went for my observations at the time. Once he was sure I was actually speaking and not just mumbling nonsense, he let his frown turn into something of a smile. He gestured to the dark, crowded bunkhouse. “Paradise, obviously.”

I grimaced. Sarcasm weren’t often on my menu unless I was the one doing the serving. “I was … _ugh…_ I was headed to Sundance,” I said, gritting my teeth at how my head ached.

“Well, you’re close by,” Another voice said. “You’re at the Triple V Ranch. Just outside of Sundance.”

The boy, the blonde one, patted my shoulder in a familiar way and crossed to the open door. “You’re lucky, you know. Only a handful of people would have pulled through the way you did.”

“Don’t… feel all that lucky, friend.” I blew my hair out of my face and slowly, carefully took in the other faces. There were none I recognised – why would I? – and I came to realise that all I was wanting at that moment was to be around faces I knew. Now I was awake, seemed like I was yesterday’s news; the other hands made their excuses and left, no doubt back to their duties, and I was left alone – save for the blonde kid, stood by the doorway. “Do I look a lucky sort to you?”

The kid shrugged. “Could be worse. Could still be out there in the wilderness getting your bones picked clean.”

With every ounce of effort, I swung my legs over to the edge of the bed and leant forward, taking in the boy’s faded chaps and flannel. “That… that ain’t no accent I’m familiar with,” I remarked.

The kid turned to look me over, his eyes large and bright with intrigue. “I’m from England,” he explained. “Portsmouth, to be exact. Got the ferry over a few years back. Before the blizzard,” he added, as if that were some sorta timeline to mark ourselves on now. “I came West to work in the banks – my grandfather gave me good credentials.”

I squinted. “Why you here, if you were off to work some fancy-ass banks?”

“Well, see, that’s the thing.” The kid smiled. “Some idiots kept robbing them.”

I tried to laugh but all that came out was some sorta strangled wheeze that got the kid reaching for a pail of water by my feet. It didn’t look none too clean, more like the sort of bucket the horses would drink from, but I didn’t care. It was _water_ , and I was thirsty. When he brought it up to me, I practically dived into it, slurping noisily as I forced as much water as I could down my gullet. When I surfaced, gasping for breath and my top half pretty much soaked, the kid let out a small laugh. “Well, I think you just might live with that attitude.”

I gave him a scowl, but couldn’t keep it on my face. “You Armin?” I asked.

“That’s right.” ‘Armin’ beamed. “Armin Arlert.”

“Well, Armin Arlert, you look about twelve.”

The smile fell pretty sharpish. “I’m almost seventeen, you know.”

I took the opportunity to gulp down another draught of water. “Don’t matter what you are, only what you look like, and I say you look twelve.”

“Mr Arlert!” Yet another voice interrupted us, someone annoyed, and as I peered around Armin to get a better look, I knew I was in trouble.

There’s a particular way of standing, of holding oneself, that makes it clear to anyone what a man is in the business of. If a man walks through a door like he owns the place, chances are he either does or he could if he felt like it. The man that walked into the bunkhouse that day stood like he didn’t only own the place, he could own it three times over.

I hated him on sight.

He was young, only a little older than me I reckoned, with a sneer curling across his lip that suggested he weren’t the type to enjoy roughing it with lowly peasantfolk. He had hair in the same style of mine, shaved underneath to keep him cool in the summer, but his was a dirtier sorta colour and was a little curled on top. His eyes, small but sharp, fixed ‘emselves upon me, sweating and wheezing and covered in water, in a bunkhouse that I was now sure belonged to him.

He stared furiously at me. I stared right on back. Then he decided to round on Armin. “I thought I said you were to feed him and send him on his way,” he sneered. “It’s been three days now, and he’s here takin’ up space!”

Armin, to his credit, did his best to stick up for me. “Please, sir, he wasn’t well enough to leave. He was found just outside of-”

“Just who do you think you are, talking to me like you’re some kind of doctor? Like some kinda sawbones?” The man spat a brown stain on the floor of the bunkhouse with a grimace. “This ain’t a hospital, Arlert, it’s a ranch. We don’t go picking up every waif and stray that comes crawling out of the woodwork now do we?” When Armin didn’t answer, he shot him a fierce glower that made the poor guy melt back against the bunkhouse wall. “Do we?”

“N-no, sir.”

He spat again, and gave me another look. I kept my gaze steady, never once wavering from his fierce glares as they swept over my dusted and ragged clothes and my shaggy, unkempt hair. “And who the hell even is this kid? He’s nothing but a skinny little runt. Probably hasn’t worked a day in his life, and probably stole that horse he’s riding.” He glanced back to Armin, still pressed against the bunkhouse wall and looking very much like he wanted to blend into it. The man got up close, too close for my liking, and almost spat in the poor kid’s face. “And you come and bring him here.”

“Leave him alone.”

He spun around to look at me again, his eyes narrowing. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said,” I struggled to stand, and just about made it with the help of a bedpost to prop me up, “leave him alone. Ain’t his fault someone brought me here.”

The man seemed stunned, like he couldn’t quite believe I had the nerve to talk to him. I kept my head as high as I was able, though I still sagged against the post for lack of energy. “And I ain’t a thief,” I said. “Ain’t no idle man neither. I herd cattle. I break horses. I do anything you want of me.” I kept going, even though the man’s expression was turning nigh on murderous. “I’m grateful to your men for helping me out there, even if you think it weren’t worth their time. Only hope they get to owning ranches someday, instead of the likes of you.”

I’d crossed a line that weren’t meant to be crossed. I saw it in his eyes. He took a step towards me with a clenched fist, and I braced myself for the blow. “Why you insolent little-”

“Oluo.”

The man jerked back, my words forgot in his surprise. There was someone standing in the doorway, someone I never thought I was gonna see again. I knew the tartan bandana and neat-heeled boots anywhere. Connie Springer was stood in the bunkhouse with his arms folded and glaring like he’d been told the whisky was all dried up. I coulda cried for him, right there and then, but I kept my mouth shut. I weren’t gonna get in his way, not now.

The man, Oluo, just stuck his nose in the air and marched back to where he stood, glaring him down. “I wondered when you’d show up. Are you the one to blame for this,” he jerked his hand towards me, “turning up on my doorstep and eating my men’s food?”

Connie gave him a look so cold it could’ve rivalled the blizzards. “I ain’t in the business for charity cases, Oluo, you know that.” He looked older now, weathered by the seasons and sporting a fair bit of stubble. He looked like a man who’d been cast off at sea and only just got back. He had the ghosts of many harsh nights and bitter days about him, and I wondered if I was any better. “But I can vouch for Jean over there. He’s a good man, works the cows like he knows ‘em. And I ain’t never seen a better shooter.”

“Him?” Oluo threw a hand in my general direction. “He can barely stand!”

“He’s not eaten in days,” Armin chipped in, startling me with his eagerness. “He’ll get stronger, just you wait.”

“I wonder,” Oluo muttered, leaning into Armin’s face and snarling like a fighting dog, “when I died and made you the owner and proprietor of this here operation?”

“That’s enough, Oluo,” Connie said, though his features remained unmoved. “Armin don’t think nothing like that, do you Armin?” Armin shook his head viciously, and Connie gave Oluo his first debonair smile. “See? Nothing to concern yourself with. He’s just the caring sort. The caring sort, you know, get angry mighty quick if they see injustice done. Don’t know no one better with numbers than Armin here, and you don’t wanna lose his favour.” He clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, despite the way he flinched. “Plenty of the boys feel the same. They wanna see this man better. Like a pet of theirs, I guess.” He shrugged. “But of course if you don’t want him, it’s your call. Kick him out. Just don’t get your panties in a twist when the boys get angry with you for doing it.”

I stared between the two of them, unable to speak or do anything. The two of them, Connie and Oluo, stood there like stallions facing off, neither wanting to make the first explosive move but the energy rippling between ‘em saying otherwise. As soon as it began, however, it was over. Oluo moved out of Connie’s way and threw up his hands. “I’m watching him, Springer. If he so much as puts a toe out of line-”

“ – then I’ll be getting my things ready for a long trek to Montana,” Connie answered for him, his voice far too practiced for this to be the first time the threat had been issued.

Oluo grunted, took one last sneering look at me, and made off out of the bunkhouse, shouting for his horse and a pair of spurs to be fetched. In that moment, everyone relaxed. Armin slumped against the bunkhouse wall, pressed a hand to his chest and looking admirably at Connie, but Connie wasn’t moving. He was looking me over, his mask falling away as he stepped towards me. “That’s really you, ain’t it Jean?” he asked.

I cleared my throat, sat back down on the bed, and hiccoughed. Connie reached me in the time it took to gulp back the tears threatening to burst out of me, and grappled me into a hug that crushed the wind out of my lungs and the water out of my eyes.

From the moment I’d opened my eyes out on the world with all its cruelty and danger, I’d seemingly made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let it know how much being alive hurt. I can’t recall crying as a child, and Ma could likely attest to that, but in the space of a few weeks I’d cried twice and both for dumb reasons. The second time, with Connie holding me like I was some sorta weeping widow, was by far the more mortifying of the two. We didn’t speak about it after, and I was fine with that. We were just relieved to have found each other again, I suppose.

Connie told me how I’d come in looking like a wraith pulled from the desert, a half-starved thing that weren’t sure of his name let alone where he was. The hands at the ranch kept me secret from the boss as much as they could, cutting down their own rations to fill my hollow belly and hiding me when the boss came calling. When he found out he’d gone one match short of ballistic, but once responsibility was taken by the bunkhouse as a whole, he’d let me be. His impatience with my getting better and leaving, however, weren’t quite so easy to resolve.

“But who brought me here?” I asked, once I had enough rest and food to speak without feeling like it was an act of god.

Connie shrugged. “Dunno. I didn’t even know you were here ‘til I came back from the fields. Someone said they had a guy in the bunkhouse half-conscious and quoting some sorta book, and I just knew immediately who it would be.”

I pressed a hand against my head and groaned. “I feel like shit…”

“Well, that’s what happens when you don’t drink and you don’t eat.” Connie grinned. “Not one of your best plans. Why not eat the horse?”

“Couldn’t… ugh… catch the bastard.” I flopped back onto the bunk and ran a hand over my face. Though I was a touch stronger and feeling better, I still desperately needed a wash of some kind. I felt bad for whichever poor idiot had let me lie on his bunk – it was likely filthy from the desert I’d brought with me. “God, what must they all think of me?”

“Not much,” Connie said, sitting down next to me. “They’re good men here. Good people. They saw someone in a jam and they got you out of it. Think they might’ve saved your life.”

“No kidding.” I sat up, the urge to get clean overriding the need to be horizontal. “You got a creek anywhere near here?”

 “Down past the West paddock,” Connie answered, scrambling to his feet the moment I did. “Want me to get your horse?”

“Damn my horse,” I muttered. “Let me use my legs.”

I could feel Connie watching after me as I stumbled out of the bunkhouse for the first time, like the way a heifer keeps an eye on her calf as it wobbles into the world. There was a part of me that was offended, but another half was kinda comforted by it. For the first time in a long while, someone actually gave a damn about me. It was a nice feeling, to be wanted. To be cared about. And my God, I’d missed Connie Springer more than I cared to admit.

The ranch I’d landed myself in was a large one, with livestock that were both fat and healthy – a rare thing, after the bite the Blizzard had taken out of the country. The buildings seemed newly constructed save for the bunkhouses and a single lonely corral, in which stood a couple of horses. Cattle and horses weren’t the only animals about the place; the chickens I’d heard when I’d first woke were everywhere, pecking their way across the corn-strewn yard. Some scattered from where I stood, but the rooster was perched on the roof of a stable door, standing guard. He kept his beady black eye on me as I strolled through his flock of ladies, ready to pounce at the slightest sign of danger. I kept out of his way; I weren’t gonna give the cowhands the satisfaction of seeing me chased down by a crowing, flapping rooster.

I found the creek easy enough; it cut through one of the livestock paddocks, the closest one to the ranch. The water looked clean and none too deep, so I threw caution to the wind and stripped down. Ain’t no one there to see me but the cows, I reckoned, and they were all too interested in the cud they were chewing to pay attention to the wisp of a man stepping into the creek in nothing but what the good Lord gave him.

The water was still cold, as the season weren’t quite into summer yet, and it sent a shudder up my body the moment I touched it. I waded in deeper, though, ignoring the shock of cold like a slap in the face from a pretty lady. It at least felt better than staying in my clothes with dirt clinging to me like a second skin. I scrubbed at it with my fists, my flesh soon turning pink with the effort, and before I could change my mind I sunk underwater, eyes screwed tight. This time, the cold was more of a punch to the gut than a slap, and I couldn’t stay under for long. I broke the surface of the water gasping for breath, my hot-blooded heart pounding in my ears and in my head, but by God it felt good.

I didn’t dwell in the creek too long; the water really was cold and my limbs were starting to numb with it, and I didn’t want to lose my life to the water when it had so recently been saved from the sun. I washed my clothes as best I could too, wringing them out and watching the muddied water drop back into the creek bed and get ferried away. Pulling ‘em on wet weren’t a pleasant experience, but it sure as hell weren’t warm enough to stay out of clothes that long. I didn’t want to cause any trouble with the ranch owner neither, if I could help it; Oluo weren’t likely to be the sort of person who liked seeing his workers wallowing in water kept for cattle.

Heading back to the ranch, I stopped to take note of where my horse was at. Since the incident in the desert, I was very much liking the idea of eating the damned creature, or setting him free in the wilds of Wyoming to see how he liked it. I found him grazing amongst a host of other horses next to the ranch, though he kept biting and snapping at the animals dumb enough to seek friendship from him. I recognised, with a pang, the piebald Mags, who was stood slightly apart from the others. The sight of her brought back memories of Buck, and I was forced to turn away sharpish to save myself the embarrassment of getting all emotional. It meant I was facing the small pen just in front of the slightly too-new-to-be-useful barn, and also meant I caught sight of the animal pacing around inside of it.

The first thing I knew for certain was that the horse that stood inside that pen weren’t of the usual stock. I’d learnt enough in my time out West to know the difference between a lady’s horse and a cowpony, and this was neither of them.

The horse that churned up the dirt in her small wooden prison had a body larger than the usual bronc but with a grace that rivalled them all, and a neck that crested like the waves on a ravaged sea. She – for it was clear she was a she – was an appaloosa, the colour of rain and thunderheads flecked across her coat, and when she saw me looking at her she stopped dead and just stared right on back.

As I drew closer – how could I not? – I noticed that her eyes were both blue between the dark forelock that fell down her face. Spanish stock, I reckoned, at least somewhere down the line. She shook her head and let out a low, rumbling whicker and spun on her heel, prancing away from me with her knees up and her head held high. She didn’t dare stray near, not even when I clicked my tongue the way I had with Buck. She kept to her end of the pen, her head still held high and her nostrils flaring pinkly. She had the showmanship and arrogance of a Spanish blooded horse, with the fierce understanding of a Mustang. She baffled me. What in the hell was a horse like this doing here?

“She’s quite the looker, isn’t she?”

I jumped. Leaning on the fence watching this horse meant I hadn’t been paying no attention to anything else, and someone had managed to sneak up on me. Armin was leant on the fence beside me, smiling like he knew all the world’s secrets. The kid unnerved me. Seemed like he was the type to find out everything a man wanted to keep quiet. He had that unassuming edge about him, I guess. I offered him nothing more than a scowl and glanced back to the horse. She was watching the both of us now, her delicate ears flicking back and forth.

“I bet your boss paid a fortune for a mare like that,” I said.

“Oh, that’s not Mr Bozard’s horse.”

I did turn to look at him then, only out of complete and utter surprise. “His wife’s, then?”

“He doesn’t have a wife.”

I frowned. “Don’t tell me she belongs to someone working here?”

Armin laughed. “Well if you don’t want me to say, I won’t.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.” Armin nodded his head over to the mare. “That is the horse owned by our resident bronco buster.”

Jean raised a brow. “I’ve busted many a bronc and I ain’t trotting around town on a horse like that. No horse breaker’s rich enough for that kind of animal.”

“Oh, she wasn’t bought. That’s what I was told.” Armin was sure the story telling kind; he couldn’t resist holding his tongue ‘til I was hooked and sunk. When he carried on, he did with a smile. “He caught her wild, out in the plains in the middle of winter. Someplace with storms, I reckon. It’s why she looks like that,” he added. “Her kind seem made out of snow and hail.”

I raised one highly cynical brow at him. “She’s a beauty sure enough, but she’s just an animal. She ain’t some creature made of wisps and follies.”

“Well, you’ve never seen her run,” was Armin’s comment.

As we had been speaking, the mare had been sidling up to us, curiosity overriding her fear for the moment. I pretended not to notice, but I could sense her getting closer, her head coming down and her ears pricked forwards, listening to us chatter. When I finally flicked my gaze away from Armin to land on her, she froze.

“Hey,” I crooned, pursing my lips and making kissing noises at her. “You’re a pretty little girl, aren’t you?”

One ear fell back, but the other remained hopefully forward.

I lifted my hand up from where I’d rested it on the fencepost, and offered it to her. She was young, there weren’t no disputing that; she still had that curiosity to her, like she wanted to sample the whole world to get an idea of it. As she considered my hand, clean from the creek and wiggling its fingers invitingly, she seemed to decide I was about as much of a threat as the fence that held her. She came over, reached out her head and allowed me the great honour of stroking her velveteen nose.

“Well,” Armin said, sounding slightly impressed as I fussed over her, “you’re doing a darn sight better than the rest of us. No one else can get near her.” I couldn’t help but smile at that.

I didn’t know why she chose to come to me that day. Maybe she knew something I didn’t. All the same, she only granted me a minute or so of touch before she backed off, flicking her ears back and snorting through her nose. I wish I could say some understanding passed between us, like we knew somehow our lives were going to be intertwined at some time or another, but there was nothing. Just me, looking at a pretty horse and she, watching some fool gawp at her.

I would have stared at her longer, too, if it weren’t for the curt shout that cut its way across the yard to us. “Mister Kirschtein!”

I stifled my grimace. I already knew that voice was gonna piss me off to no end. Armin gave a sympathetic smile as I pushed away from the pen and turned to face Oluo, who was seated on a fine-boned mare and looking down at me like I was the dirt under his boot. He was dressed up smart like he was going to church, though his liquor blush did a good job of ruining that illusion quick, and when he saw me looking he hacked and spat on the floor beside him. The horse tossed its head, and got a jerk in the mouth for its trouble. “You seem like you’re acquainting yourself mighty well with the place I got running here,” Oluo drawled, his vowels slowed by drink.

I reined in all possible snaps and bites and pushed out the pleasantries. “It’s a nice- looking ranch you have, sir. A good head of cattle, and some fine horses. I wouldn’t mind resting here a spell, working for you and helping things along.”

Oluo’s lip curled. “You’re goddamn right it is.” He shifted his weight in the saddle, and jerked the horse in the mouth again for shifting too. “You’re lucky you got friends in this place, Mister Kirschtein. If I didn’t think kicking you out was gonna cause some sorta revolt you’d be out of here before you could say ‘Sundance.’”

I bristled. “With respect, sir, I think you’re being a touch unfair. I’m very grateful for whatever circumstances brought me to you, and I don’t wanna be taking anymore than I should be. Like I said, I’ll work hard. Damn hard. That I can promise you.”

Oluo scoffed. “You wandering cowboys are all the same. Think you can swan in here with your promises and fancy words, and think us folk’ll bend over backwards to have you with us. Well, I gots a secret for you, cowboy.” He leaned forwards in his saddle, so much so that I could smell the rancid liquor on his breath. “I don’t like wanderers. You stay here and work for me for a good long while, or you get your horse and your fancy words and get out right now.”

What could I do? There weren’t no way I was gonna get anywhere by myself, with nothing but dust in my pocket and a horse that wouldn’t wrangle. Any other time, any other place and I’d have told him just where to put that demand of his – but this weren’t a year ago. This was a chance, a chance that could well be my last, and I didn’t have no choice. I looked up into that flushed, leering face, and nodded. “What you say goes, sir.”

And god, was I gonna regret saying that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Jean sings is a famous folk song called 'Down in the Valley'. I have a feeling it's a little too recent for the time period (that's what I get for poor research), but it just seemed fitting for the situation.  
> After all, only Jean could sing a tragic ballad when his own tragic ballad is riding up next to him...he's just that talented |D


	6. Act 1, part v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an update! In this chapter we see Jean meet a bronco buster who has the potential to turn his current life on his head, life on the ranch Jean's found himself on and how he starts to realise that some people don't get the lot in life they should be owed...
> 
> As always I can be found on Tumblr (for how much longer, who knows olol) or Twits if you have any questions or comments, or leave a comment here!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and for your continued support (this chapter is a bit of a monster, I know, stick with it). 
> 
> Tumblr: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @purple_tealeaf

Oluo wasn’t a bad employer – not at first. He mostly stayed out of our way, doling out our duties and then retiring to his ranch house to host ridiculous parties with his friends or drink his way into a stupor. He had no wife, Connie told me, only a housekeeper with a bad temper and his parents’ graves out back. Apparently they didn’t want to get buried in a graveyard where their bones could mix with the common folk. If that don’t explain what sorta man Oluo was, nothing will.

He never let us call him by his first name, thought it degrading for him and arrogant of us to try. No, he wanted us to call him ‘sir’. No matter what he was doing, no matter what we were asking, it was ‘sir’, ‘sir’, ‘sir’, all the time. Made him feel important, I guess. Power can do that to a man. Once he’s got it, it works like a blow to the head; he either walks it off and pretends it ain’t changed him, or he goes dizzy with the impact. Oluo, I figure, was the dizzy sort. The hands called him sir, sure enough, but not without adding some unsavoury word onto the end of it in their own time. No one really thought him worthy of it.

But as I said, he kept himself to himself first off. I got to work with the others, feeding the cattle in the home pastures and roping the calves for branding and sorting. My body was still weak to begin with, still healing from its ordeal of being near-starved, but that feeling of being myself again settled in my bones and made the smiles just that little bit more natural. I’d worried for so long about never getting out on the plains again that I’d even started to believe it was impossible.

I was slotting into bunkhouse life pretty well too, though I still kept my distance from most of the boys; they were a noisy, outgoing sort, and I didn’t quite mix with them. The bunk I’d woke up in became my own, though I didn’t know which kind soul had given it up for me, but the noise and card games and drinking that went on in the evenings meant even that weren’t no solace.

As the weeks wore on, however, that promise of mine felt like a noose tightening around my neck. Oluo weren’t like the employers I’d worked for before; he didn’t like us socialising much outside of the ranch, and refused our requests to take wagons into the town to get supplies. We would go into town, he said, when he told us to. We weren’t allowed to blink without his permission, which reminded me too much of school and the teachers who’d given me a caning for daydreaming. Though none of my old teachers, thankfully, had ever spat their spent chewing tobacco at our faces if they thought us slacking.

He soon took to coming out of his house just to watch us work, sat forever on his bony riding mare and jerking her in the mouth whenever she so much as twitched outta line. He controlled that mare like he wanted to control us, keeping her on so tight a rein she could barely breathe without him feeling it, and causing her pain should she try to escape his grasp. That was one of the things, small though it was, that watered that hatred of mine so readily. They say you can learn a lot from a man by the way he treats his servants – I reckon it’s more like the way he treats his animals. But I couldn’t say nothing, and Oluo continued to walk his mare up and down the edges of our work with a sneer to share with every face he passed. He often lingered on me, like he was waiting for an excuse to get mad. I made sure to be irritatingly perfect.

Far from amusing him like I thought it would, Oluo’s attention made Connie more twitchy than the calves we roped. He’d stare furiously at him, even stopping what he was doing to glare. It caused a ripple across us all, and whilst I kept my head down and kept working at whatever I was doing, others stopped and watched how things played out. It usually always ended with Connie losing his temper later on in the bunkhouse, but nothing ever happened out in the fields or the corrals. Connie would just glare, and Oluo would just spit in the dirt and ride on.

The day it changed, Oluo stopped his mare with a jab to her tender mouth and barked, “If you got time to lollygag, Springer, you got time to work! I don’t pay you to stand around giving me the stink-eye.”

Connie gave him the worst look of them all, but got back to work. It weren’t a long-lasting thing. I was in the middle of holding a particularly lively bullock down, and at the precise moment Armin pressed the hot iron into his flank, Oluo said something that was lost in the bellowing of the bullock and the shouts from the men surrounding him. The bullock threw his head to the side enough for me to spot Connie taking a step towards Oluo with his fists clenched. The quiet part of me, for a moment, broke apart.

“Connie!” I bleated, half struggling with the bullock at my feet and half panicking about what the hell he was planning on doing. “Get over here before you open that big mouth of yours!”

To my relief, Connie heard me. He stopped, fists still clenched and teeth still bared, but he didn’t move no farther. Oluo looked from me to Connie and back again, brow raised. “What’s it to be, eh? Gonna be a man or gonna go back to your wife?”

To my horror, a few of the men beside me snickered. I felt myself turning red even though I didn’t want to, and let go of the bullock just to be an ass. The men shouted and swore as it scrambled to its feet, but I didn’t pay them no attention. I was glaring at Oluo, and hoping for Connie. “C’mon, Con’,” I urged. “Ain’t no point in getting yourself worked up for no good reason.”

Oluo bristled. “I wonder what you mean by that, Kirschtein?”

I tried not to bite back, honest to God I did. But looking at him just made the bile rise up the back of my throat and out.

“I’m saying that you ain’t worth the force it’d take to knock you flat.  _Sir._ ”

Now even the bullock went quiet. Oluo looked nigh-on murderous. I was turning back to the others, feeling the knives imbedding themselves in my back as I did, but I’d done what I’d set out to do. Connie weren’t gonna be attacking our employer no time soon. I knew there was an axe above my head– it was just a matter of waiting for it to fall.

“Say goodbye to your wage this month, Kirschtein,” Oluo snarled. Ah, the bite of the axe. “And you’re on half meals. Maybe then you’ll learn some respect.” He then addressed the others, who were stood watching with gaping mouths. “Any one of you who dares give this man money or food will be given the same treatment, is that understood?”

A morose nod passed between them all, though most just looked at me as though I was a complete lunatic. Maybe I was.

And so it was that I got weak again, though this time through the hand of a man and not the elements. The control of a man either breaks or makes him, and for me it simply made my heart and soul stronger. Sure, my body weren’t thanking me for the words I said, but inside me that fierceness roared like an open fire. My pockets were empty again, but something inside me unlocked during those times. It led me to do something I hadn’t done in a long time: question. Why was it that I, a man who worked myself to the bone, had nothing to show for it, whilst men like Oluo profited? The men of the ranch kept it from sinking, looked after those cattle and those horses like they were their own, and got little in return. Oluo sat in his house, smoke and drank too much and simply shouted out orders when the wind turned sour.

Questioning my lot in life, you see, made me strong and got me thinking. And thinking was probably the most dangerous thing for a kid like me.

Dislike was a strong thing too. I nurtured the germ of it for Oluo until it sprouted into something nothing short of hatred and grew fat on the questions I gave it. Without the money I was used to and the freedom of going where I liked, that hatred was something I clung to. I spoke it to the warm desert air on the nights I knew Oluo was out drinking with his friends, and held it to my chest whenever I was wrangling a particularly troublesome bullock or yearling.

Connie, I found, had hatred too. His was a far more violent creature, more sharp and prone to bleeding. I often had to give a few shoves to remind him to keep his head down and shut his mouth. He lost his food privileges once or twice the same as I did, but he always kept a few tidbits under his mattress for such times. He was nothing if not resourceful. After a few more brushes with Oluo, I started doing the same. There we were, squirreling rations away in desperation – and it was only a matter of time before that desperation and hatred would come out of Connie like a fireball.

“I tell you, Jean,” he said, as we were finishing up a fencing job one day in June, “I’m getting myself outta here one way or another. Just you see. If I have to work for that bastard much longer, I’ll kill him.”

I frowned, propping my hat on one of the fence posts as I finished hammering in a nail. This had been a long job, and it was the height of the summer. I was sweating like a pig, and brewing a nice headache too. I didn’t like the way Connie spoke sometimes, ‘specially about killing. He weren’t the same grinning teenager I’d met all those years ago; the years and the Blizzard had broken that smile of his in two, and I sometimes wondered if Connie remembered how to smile at all. It made me nervous. “You say that like you ain’t got a choice.” 

“It look like I have one?” Connie asked. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his bandana and gestured at the blazing sun. “I’m in the middle of nowhere, fixing someone else’s broken down fence, with a grouchy bastard next to me. I either stay here and kill the sonofabitch, or I leave and avoid getting lynched.”  

“Don’t talk that way!” I smacked him in the arm. “And I ain’t no grouch.” 

“Jean, I’m your friend and your brother in all but blood, and I say you’re a grouch.” He dodged the next smack I sent his way and snorted. “Besides, since we’re talking about choices, what kind of choice do you have? This ain’t what you wanted, not back when we were younger. You wanted adventure, romance, something to live for. Can’t say working for this bastard is your dream come true.”

I was busy leaning my weight onto the post to ensure it wouldn’t break. His question, though, made me stop. “What, you sayin’ I have no choice but to get out?”

“I’m saying you should start thinking about making tracks, before you get stuck here and get worked like a mule ‘til you got no breath left in you.”

I moved back to the fencing. It was a cheerful thought, coming from Connie, but I couldn’t stop the teeth of reality that sunk into me at his words. Maybe I would die out here, with nothing to show for it ‘cept an empty bunk and a few dusty books stuck under the mattress. The thought chilled me, despite the blistering sun.

“Alright,” I replied, the bite to my words a warning, “that don’t go giving me no choice at all. We’ll go set up a ranch ourselves, get a few head of cattle and hire our own hands, that what you got in mind?”

I finished up with the fence and turned back to Connie, but he was just stood thinking, thumbs tucked into the belt loops of his jeans and his gaze far away. He was a dreamer too, I realised at that moment. He was just the quieter kind. “Con, think it. We ain’t got no money. We never have. What do we do, rob a goddamn bank?”

The fact he didn’t respond right away was a touch unnerving.

As we mounted up and headed back to the ranch, my mustang ignoring every nudge to his flank, I noticed a flurry of movement in one of the smaller corrals. It was hard to see from where we were, but there was definitely some sorta animal galloping about the place looking for a way out. “What’s going on over there?”

“Hell if I know,” Connie replied, still sour from our talk. “Let’s hope it’s Oluo and that horse of his has finally stepped on his head.” 

It was at that moment a short, sharp squeal split across our ears. Mags spooked, her gentle walk breaking into a snappy trot that took Connie a little while to control. My horse kept pace with her just to be an annoyance, but I reined him back quicker. I knew that noise; it was the kind a trapped animal would make, something erupted from rage. “Someone’s breaking horses,” I said. It weren’t no question. I knew it for a fact.

Connie was busy patting the side of Mags’ neck to calm her. “There, there, good girl,” he soothed, though she was still a mite twitchy. “Probably is,” he said, this time directing it at me. “Guess our bronco buster’s decided to finally get that mankiller of Oluo’s trained, I reckon.”

Ah, the elusive bronco buster. The owner of the Appaloosa. Another squeal broke the air, and this time both our horses tried to bolt. We were ready though, and hauled back to stop ‘em from getting too far ahead and losing their heads. “Mankiller?” I queried.

“Yeah, right bronc if ever I saw one. Wild stallion, they found him by the canyons. Kicking and screaming when they brought him in, he was – could cut the air with that noise.” He shuddered. “Wouldn’t go near him for no love or money, that’s for sure.”

“But this bronco buster got the guts?”

Connie grinned. “I reckon so.”

Now that was interesting. Politics ain’t my sort of thing. Neither is listening to men gabbling about their money, or their women, or their ranches. But horses? Horses are a language that, if they ever taught it, I would be fluent. One thing that weren’t part of the language though was the word ‘mankiller’. And Connie was smiling pretty damn sweet, like he was a man who knew a thing I weren’t privy to.

So, hell, curiosity got the better of me. I spurred my horse into a jog and set off back down the slopes to the ranch, spotting already that a group of hands were gathering at the corral’s edge. Connie followed behind, keeping Mags on his hand so she wouldn’t go and get herself worked up again.

The corral I was riding towards was a large square space with fencing that looked as though an extra few feet had been added recently, and a small shack of a shelter at its edge closest to the ranch. As I got closer I saw the last few feet had been tacked on in a rush, and some were crooked. Sat in the shelter, amongst the straw and hay and fodder, was a bunch of the ranch hands we shared the bunkhouse with. Some were smoking a pipe and others passed around a bottle of whiskey, the grins on their faces identical.

I stayed out of their way – since the refusal to help me with food came about, I hadn’t much been trusting of them – and tethered the mustang close by. I ducked under the fence, then, and slumped against one of the shelter’s edges with Connie in tow. Armin spared us a glance and a small smile, but I didn’t return it. I was too busy watching the little drama playing out inside the corral.

The stallion in question was trotting around the corral’s edge, his head held at a jaunty angle and his ears flat against his head. He was a handsome thing, tall for a Mustang and with a head like the appaloosa’s, regal and fierce. He was the colour of pig iron, mottled in much the same way too, and as he moved the dapples on his quarters danced like raindrops. He was a nice-looking horse alright, suited to far more than just simple ranch work, but there was a savagery in his eye, in the way he held himself, in his high step. The rope halter he had around his face looked as though it had been forced on with little care for how it cut into the skin of his nose, but it scarcely seemed to bother him. He knew he was a prize worthy of fighting for.

In the centre of the corral, watching this ferocious dance, was a man with his back to us loosening and shortening a lasso. He held no hurry in his movements, and he gazed at the prancing, snorting animal like it was nothing more than a picture in a book.

“What the devil is he doing?” I heard one of the hands mutter. “Just rope the damn thing already and get him on the ground!”

I rolled my eyes, but said nothing as the man turned a little so he was side-long to the stallion – and to us.

I’d like to say that I recognised him immediately, that I took one look at the solemn, bright-eyed man watching this so-called killer horse churn up the ground of the corral and knew him for the man who’d raced in Telluride and bothered me back in New Mexico. But I was forgetful, and he was older. The memory though, tucked away for safekeeping, was there. Bit by bit it came back to me, thoughts of freckles and dark hair and a smirk that all too clearly broke hearts. But that came slow, and at first all I saw was some crazy bronco buster standing off against this proud, angry horse. Only later did I see him as who he was.

Connie gave me a nudge and a grin, and I felt the boyish glee I’d missed for a few years rush up within me.

The man in the centre stilled, his movements with the lasso stopping entirely. The stallion stopped too, sensing that the game was about to change. His nostrils flared. His ears flicked forward to tell us all he was alert, he was ready, he was figuring things out. Stallion and buster stood off, neither one moving too much except for the occasional snort from the stallion or a heaving breath from the man. Then the spell broke, and everything happened quickly.

The bronco buster moved first, stepping to the stallion’s right. As predicted, the horse took off to the left – but ran straight into the path of a sailing noose. The man had thrown it as he’d moved. It settled over the stallion’s head and he wasted no time in pulling the rope tight about its neck. The stallion exploded into a series of bucks and squeals, his body curving off the ground with every lunge, and when he took off like a freight train all the buster could do was hold on.

This had been what the others were waiting for; cheers and shouts rose up from the shelter, both the pipe and bottle of whiskey raised in a sarcastic salute as he was dragged about the corral by the bucking, terrified stallion. The dust-cloud the two raised up was enough to cover the man entirely, his face disappearing in the sandy grit of the Wyoming dustbowl, but he didn’t let go. He clung like a limpet, digging his heels into the ground and hauling back on the rope like his life depended on it. He knew as well as I (and probably moreso) that however much a horse squeals like a suckling pig, he ain’t gonna be able to buck and kick forever. 

It was a long, sad thing to watch the stallion tire. That was the aim, of course; you had to get the horse, exhausted, onto the ground and get a saddle thrown over their back. You tighten it around their bellies tight, you let ‘em go and watch ‘em buck it out. Usually, as they’re already pretty spent from dragging you about the place for the better part of an hour, they accept the saddle with little complaint. Later, it becomes your turn to get on and become the thing it has to get used to. I’d done it plenty of times before, gentled many a fighting horse – but I had a feeling this one weren’t gonna be going down easy.

The others in the shelter seemed to think so too. “He’s lucky he ain’t turned around and gone for him,” one commented. “Killed a cowpoke from the ranch yonder who tried to break him, you know.”

Amid swigs from the whiskey, another hand added, “Crushed the poor bastard against the fence. Trampled him to a pulp, didn’t stand no chance. Skull cracked like an egg.” The group winced. “Bit of a nasty shock for whoever went to get the fella for supper, seeing him dead and the horse with blood all over.”

I looked back to where bronc and buster were struggling against one another, and didn’t like the idea of scraping no human off the corral none. But the bucking was stopping, and the body wrenching leaps weren’t quite so violent. The buster started pulling back once the stallion hit the ground, and soon every time he tried to buck he got a sharp jab from the rope for his trouble. After one final buck (one that impressed even me for height), the man’s sharp tug on the rope overbalanced the stallion and brought him down in a screaming tangle of legs and rope.

The buster moved quickly, darting to the stallion’s side and throwing himself onto the heaving flank to stop him from rising. For a moment I thought it was over, that the stallion had given in – but then, as he crept closer to the horse’s face, the legs started flailing in a panic.

“Goddamnit, can one of you quit goggling like owls and get over here?” he roared.

The voice was the final piece of the puzzle forming in my mind. It slotted together, and I knew with a jolt. _Marco Bodt._

All of the hands hesitated. I looked at each of them, and they were either avoiding his eye or looking like they was about to get up and leave. I pushed my hat off my face and cleared my throat.

“I’ll do it.”

His head snapped up. All of a sudden, I felt everyone’s eyes land on me and start burning my skin. I flushed a little under the weight of ‘em all, but kicked off from the shelter and walked over – wondering, at the same time, what the hell I thought I was doing.

Drawing near to the stallion showed just how big he was; he was easily 15 hands, big for a wild horse and as large as my old Buck. Though he was definitely more dangerous-looking up close, he was also more beautiful too. I felt my heart, weak though it was, go out to the poor creature. Marco Bodt was still staring at me, looking me up and down like he was wondering if I was really suited to the task. Maybe that was how I saw it, anyway. I sensed, at least, a degree of disbelief in his gaze. I folded my arms and glowered down at him.

“What, you don’t need the help?”

He blinked. “Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re a mite skinny.” As if on cue, the stallion shrieked and started to thrash, and Bodt was forced to lie across him and use all his weight to stop him from moving. “Though I guess,” he panted, “I guess some help is better than no help at all.”

“I’m flattered. Really. You’re makin’ me wanna help you more and more.” I peered down at the stallion, watching the way his eyes were rolling like dice in his head. “What do you want me to do?”

He did the same thing again, considering me, before he shuffled over and instructed, “I want you to lie across his body. Keep him pinned down, make sure he can’t get a foothold. If he does, then you forget about me and run like hell, got it?”

I looked at him. I hadn’t been able to get a proper look at him in New Mexico; the night had been dark, and there was barely enough light to show he existed at all. It was strange, to see him proper. He was older, of course he was, but there was still that boyish look about him, the kind that’s excited by everything and wants to know about its every detail. He had a dusting of stubble across his jaw from where he hadn’t been able to shave for the past few days – no doubt on his trip back here – and it mottled his face like his freckles. I blinked and focused back on the furious horse beneath us both. “That’s it,” he encouraged as I put my entire body weight on him. “He ain’t gonna be able to clip ya when he’s like this. Keep him steady and calm for me.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “You’ve been chasing him around for the better part of a half hour.”

He shrugged. “Talk to him.”

“Bout what?”

He fixed me with an expression that weren’t the most impressed. “The stock market. It don’t matter, just talk to him.”

I shot him a black look, but started thinking of something to say. The stallion’s flanks were heaving, his stomach rising and falling like bellows on some contraption, and it only got quicker as Bodt approached his head. “H-hey,” I started, feeling like the dumbest fool this side of the creek as I did so. “Just calm down there, partner.”

The stallion pinwheeled his legs in the dirt, throwing a cloud of dust over the three of us, but I threw myself on him again and he didn’t get nowhere. Bodt looked at me, asking without words if I was alright, and only when I nodded did he turn back to his task.

I tried again. “Y-you’re from the canyons, right? The ones just East of here, with all that desert and all that sky. You’re a long way from home.” I started to stroke the part of his shoulder I could reach, the flesh twitching under my touch like I was some irksome fly. “Bet it’s different from hereabouts. Bet you’re scared, having us all about you too. S’okay to be scared, you know. All of us are scared when we’re in someplace we ain’t sure of.”

The stallion gave a deep, shuddering snort through his nose which seemed like some kinda sigh.

Bodt was crouched down by the stallion’s head, ugly with fear and exhaustion. There was a softness to his eyes as he looked the stallion over, a gentleness I didn’t expect to see, and I wondered if the horse recognised it too.

He reached out a hand to skim over the stallion’s face, a barely-there touch that made the wild horse’s body ripple with anger or fright. He moved on, down along the stallion’s neck and rubbing large, firm circles into the twitching flesh. The stallion’s ears were still pinned back but the heaving was coming easier now, the breaths slowing to match Bodt’s steady touches.

I realised I’d stopped talking, and stumbled to keep going. “Y-you’re gonna be looked after, just you wait. You’re gonna get all the food you ever want and all the company you ever need.” I paused. “You might get your nads taken, but we won’t talk about that.” I heard Bodt snicker at that, but I didn’t look up. “But it’ll be fine, here with us. One day we’ll take you back to those canyons, gallop you through ‘em like before, and you’ll wonder why you ever wanted to be there in the first place.”

“Look,” I heard Bodt whisper. I glanced up and saw that one of the stallion’s ears was twitching towards me. “He’s listening to you.”

I smiled. “Would you look at that.”

He grinned. “Think he might be relaxed enough now.”

“For what?”

He brandished a small knife from his pocket and leaned over the stallion’s face. The ear went back to being pinned, and there was a low groan coming from the barrel of his chest that warned of a very loud scream to be coming. I started where he’d left off, rubbing large circles into the stallion’s shoulder and wondering what the hell he was gonna do with a knife so close to the horse’s face. I watched as, with the quick hands of a man practiced in such things, Bodt cut the rope halter from the stallion’s face and flung it away. I blinked at him. “What are you-?”

He didn’t answer. He was bringing something else out of his pocket, something in a small tin. I stared at him as he dipped his fingers into it and then started to trace around the slight cuts in the stallion’s flesh where the halter had dug in. He was humming softly as he worked, everything he was completely focused on his task, and though the stallion jerked about a few times at the pain of the ointment to his skin, he stayed remarkably calm. Once he was sure his task was done, he rocked back on his heels and nodded. “That ought to do it.”

I gawped at him. “Where’s the saddle?”

He frowned. “Saddle?”

“For the stallion. You’re… you’re breaking him, aren’t you?”

His frown smoothed itself out, but he shook his head. “Not today, kid.” He clicked his tongue and stood back, gesturing for me to do the same. The end of the rope was lying in the dust, half buried by the force of the stallion’s thrashing, but Bodt took a hold of it anyway and backed off. “Get on up, then,” he ordered, flicking the rope at the stallion. “Go on, get!”

The stallion needed no convincing. He scrambled to his feet in an instant, shaking off the dirt that clung to his coat and tossing his head at the feeling of having nothing about his face. He tucked his head into his chest and regarded the rope stretching taut between himself and his tormentor. His ears were still back, but his eyes didn’t roll no more. Now he was simply nervous. He weren’t looking for a way to escape anymore, I realised; he was simply trying to work this strange two-legged out.

Bodt took a step forward, but it was a careful one. It weren’t the same darting movement as before – it was a question, not a demand. The horse known for trampling a man to death let him come, his head held up high and his eye very much fixed on him. Bodt took another step, and then another, until he was face to face with the twitching, nervous animal. I stayed well back, not wanting to risk getting hurt myself – if Bodt had a death wish, then so be it – but my feelings had changed. The stallion, I figured, weren’t gonna hurt no one.

Marco Bodt smiled, reaching out a hand to run down the stallion’s sweaty neck, and the horse let him. He gave a gentle pressure on the rope, just the slightest amount, and the stallion lowered his head. We all watched as, to our surprise and awe, he slid the rope off the stallion’s neck and let it drop like a dead snake to the ground beside the ruins of the rope halter. The stallion didn’t move, his ears flicking back and forth like he was trying to decide on what to think. When Bodt took another step forward however, his nerve broke and he stepped away, throwing up his head with a nervous snort.

The man clearly took it to mean something we didn’t; he took one great stride forward and flapped his arms with a great shout. The stallion took fright and bolted, his gallop taking him to the outer edge of the corral – but Bodt didn’t go after him. He just stood and waited, no tricks up his sleeve or words in his mouth. He just stood, watching this stallion slide to a halt and look back at him, nostrils flaring and the ointment he’d rubbed onto his wounds shiny with the mingled sweat. The stallion stood guard there, ears pinned and king of his own little scrap of territory.

“There. That’ll about do it,” Bodt said briskly, and reached down to retrieve the coils of rope in the dust.

I gawped at him. All of us did. There were grumbles, too, but I weren’t a part of that. Bodt didn’t pay no mind; he just shouldered the rope, gave a brief smile and set off in the opposite direction to the stallion. He was headed towards the gate, out of the corral, and both the stallion and I stared furiously at him, both of us confused out our minds.

“Hey!” I called out.

He didn’t stop.

“HEY.”

He turned, an eyebrow quirking up til it disappeared in that flyaway hair of his. He didn’t speak, but there weren’t a need to. I could see I wouldn’t get no answer, not one I’d understand anyway. The smile, small and polite, asked me to go on – but the hard set to his eyes suggested strongly that I shouldn’t. He reached the corral fence and picked up his hat, set on one of the posts for safekeeping. It was a battered black thing, more scrap that hat, but he put it on anyway and it seemed to suit. “My name is Marco, friend. I’d much prefer you use that instead of hollering like a fishwife.”

I flushed. “Marco. Whatever.”

His smile stayed polite. “You got a question?”

Again, I had the sense I shouldn’t be asking, or that I should just walk away. But instead I fell into step with him across the corral, checking over my shoulder every now and again to make sure I weren’t about to get charged down by a 750 pound wall of angry horseflesh. Every time the stallion never moved, though he held his head high and kept us in his line of sight.

“He ain’t gonna attack us, you know.”

I jumped. I’d been too busy looking at the stallion to realise I was about to knock into the back of the man I’d helped wrestle the thing to the ground. Marco was waiting, the look in his eye a little more genuine now. I didn’t return that smile.

“You got him on the ground, Marco.”

Marco smiled. “That I did.”

“You had him tired out.”

“I know.”

“You coulda slung a saddle on his back and be done with it.”

The smile fell. Marco looked back over my shoulder, and I followed his sight to see the stallion had lowered his head now, the guard in him gone. He was chewing something invisible, his tail flicking out behind him like a curtain of rain. Marco then looked back to me, a frown creasing the space between his brows. There it was, that look I recognised from back when he was facing off against the Utes. He looked… disappointed. “Ain’t about getting things over and done with, kid,” he said, like it was the answer to a problem so easy he was offended I’d asked. “Ain’t a contest, no… fight between man and beast to see who’s gonna win. It’ll be the beast every time.”

I frowned. “I’ve busted many a bronc in my time and I ain’t never-”

“Have you now?” the smile was back, though this time it felt a touch mocking. “With respect, friend, you ain’t never busted a bronc properly in your life if you think that beating ‘em into submission is the same as training.”

I flushed. “I didn’t say I-”

“KIRSCHTEIN.”

I flinched. Marco noticed. He jerked his head around to where Oluo was trotting into view, his horse champing at the bit in her mouth and flecked with foam. “Thought I told you to fix that fence!” he hollered at us.

I bit my tongue. “I did, sir. Just finished.”

“And thought you’d reward yourself with watching someone else work, is that it?” Oluo’s lip curled. “Get your lazy no-good rotten ass to work, unless you want to lose your breakfast tomorrow.” He hawked and spat in the dirt beside his mare’s feet and she flinched herself.

Marco’s brows furrowed. “Begging your pardon sir, but he weren’t doing nothing wrong. Matter of fact, he was helping me out. Plenty of other men were just sat watching.”

Oluo’s head snapped to Marco, and his eyes narrowed still more. “You’d do well to stay outta my business, Bodt. You’re here to break horses, not come to the defence of some good-for-nothing cowpoke.” He shot me a vile look, which I had to try my utmost not to return. “Come to think of it, breaking that stallion is taking a mighty long time for you to do. Maybe,” he added with another tobacco-hawking spit, “you ain’t as good as they say you are.”

Marco’s smile became somewhat more forced. “Now that ain’t fair, sir. You know I do what I do and I’m good at it.” He glanced at the mare, who was blowing through her nose as nervous as the stallion had been, and took a step forward.

Oluo glowered at him, but Marco ignored it and focused on the mare, running his hand up and across her swan-like neck. He cooed to her soft and calming before he looked back at Oluo, and only then did he fix the man with a glare. It seemed out of place on him, like he weren’t built to fit such anger on – but my god, that glare could ice deserts.

“I’m breaking that stallion for you due to a debt I’m settling with your parents, God rest them. So I’m thinking that maybe it’s you who should stay outta my way.” He stepped away from him and gestured to his restless horse. “And I advise you treat your mare better. She’s too nervous now, too scared of what you’d do, but sooner or later she’ll realise she’s double your weight and don’t have to stand for your messing. When that day comes, you best be carrying a gun.”

I didn’t stick around to see how the argument ended. Weren’t my business to know. Instead I backed right off to where Connie was stood, his arms folded and the frown back on his face like it had been carved there. “What’s that face for?” I asked as I neared him, bumping him on the shoulder.

Connie shrugged me off and nodded his head towards where Marco and Oluo stood talking. Funny, even though Oluo was the one on the horse, Marco seemed to tower above him. “Looks like the horse was only round one of what Marco Bodt’s got in store for us.”

“Doubt it.” I looked over at Marco as he threw another tight smile Oluo’s way, bunched the rope further up his shoulder and made his way back toward the ranch house. He had the walk of a humble man, slow and steady like he didn’t want no trouble or no attention to come his way. “Don’t look like the fighting type. And his racing days must be over, if he ain’t got Betty with him.”

“That’s true,” Connie agreed, “but a place like this makes a man do things it ain’t customary to do.”

I thought back to the talk Connie and I had up on the hill and had to agree with him. Especially when, a few days later, the bouts of misfortune started happening.

* * *

It started small, like rain. Tiny droplets of bad luck, they were, the kind that dripped down from noses in the form of colds or bit like the midges that attacked the livestock and made ‘em antsy. I started noticing it before the others did, but mainly ‘cus I was out of the bunkhouse so often. A load of the hands got the flu, and had to stop working for a day or so. Oluo refused to pay ‘em for these days of rest, which caused ill tempers to fester.

Then the ranch hands’ things started to go missing. Again, things started small; a match here, a coil of rope there, but soon it became more personal. More valuable. Belt buckles started disappearing, plucked from the leather, or parts of bridles and saddles that men had brought back to oil and clean. I had nothing left for folk to steal, so I just sat and watched the others lose things. When Connie lost his hip flask, he swore and cursed blue murder that he would find the bastard responsible.

But no one owned up.

No one told Oluo either – he weren’t likely to do something, and would find a way to punish us all – so we suffered quietly, angry and confused but helpless.

The only one new, the only one folk didn’t talk too all that much, was me.  I don’t blame them for the sour looks and the sharp shoves I started getting dealt after that. After all, I was a man with nothing. They were men with something. The logic added up.

Only I wasn’t stealing nothing. And I would admit to it all these years later, if I were.

Things got stranger; Oluo’s horses started to behave out of sorts. We’d go to the paddocks to feed ‘em and bring ‘em in for grooming and checking over, and they’d be sweating like pigs. They were jumpy and on constant alert, like they was expecting some creature to come leaping out at them when their backs were turned. No amount of soothing or gentling would calm ‘em. The only horses unaffected were the our horses, if we’d brought any with us, and the stallion in the corral.

The Appaloosa who’d been pacing around her small pen for so long also stayed calm and healthy. I took to watching her most nights, when Oluo’s horses had been brought in and rubbed down. Our horses were riff-raff, not kept with the pedigrees and the prancers that our employer dealt in. No, they had their place, just as we had ours, and apparently this Appaloosa of Marco Bodt’s was no exception. So I would bring in the nervous wrecks and come visit the Appaloosa. Just to check on her. Just to see if I could get closer.

Sometimes she would let me and press her quivering nose into my palm to search me for any treats or titbits I might have about my person. Other days she would shy away and stand in the other corner of the pen, staring me down like she was a bronc and I her tamer. One night, when she was in a friendly mood, I didn’t notice no one appear behind me ‘til they was practically breathing down my neck. I was too busy playing with the Appaloosa, tickling her lip until she curled it up, chasing my taunting fingers.

“Careful. Give her enough attention and she’ll think you’re fallin’ in love with her.”

I turned sharpish – and looked right into the face of Marco Bodt. The coldness in his eyes from the argument was gone now, replaced instead with the sparks of amusement that had danced in his eyes those days before.

To my horror, I felt the heat rising in my cheeks. I pushed off the pen and tried to shrug it off. “Excusin’ me, mister. S’not my place to be messin’ with another man’s property.”

Marco, instead of telling me to get lost, gave a dry laugh and shook his head. “It’s alright, kid, no need to jump like a buck. I was just teasing you. And this little lady is just as much of a flirt.” As if to agree with him, the Appaloosa bobbed her head and began again to frisk me for treats.

“You do a lot of that,” I commented, though I turned back to the pen. “Teasing, I mean.”

I felt his eyes on me. Still sparking. Still amused. “That’s just my nature. Ain’t nothing cruel in it.”

I bit my lip. He didn’t need to know how I was always waiting for a tease or a taunt to jump out at me from any corner – came with the territory of a large family. “You best be careful,” I answered, brusque as I could make it, “in case someone don’t take kindly to that… nature of yours.”

Marco, to my surprise, gave an airy laugh. “Oh, I do alright.” He clicked his tongue and the Appaloosa quit fussing me, instead turning to him with a mooning look in her eye. “Guess I ain’t met many tenderfooted ranch hands in my time.”

The heat kept rising, so I popped up my collar and pretended I was cold to hide it from him. I hadn’t forgotten about the time in New Mexico, when he had rustled cattle clean from under me with his soft talk and ease of being. I’d been too green back then, too trusting. I couldn’t let it happen again, no matter how friendly the smile or playful the talk. I said to him, casual as I could, “I ain’t as much a tenderfoot as I used to be, you know. I’ve been all parts.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Marco replied, his eyes on his horse. “The blizzard last winter was bad for everyone. I seen many a respectable and true man get the blood froze in his veins, and his fortunes changed for the bad.” He glanced at me, like he was waiting for me to agree. I could only manage a sullen nod. “Bettin’ you’ve had to grow up fast, kid.”

I glowered at him. “You know, I ain’t no kid. I don’t reckon I’m shy of a year under you.”

“Maybe so, but you got the look of freshness about you, ‘spite all the dirt.” Marco gave me a glance that was of the appraising kind, something that nestled under my skin and stayed there to bite. “You got an eye that I ain’t seen on no seasoned rancher. So kindly allow me my nicknames, for teasing’s sake.”

I bristled like an angered porcupine at his words. “Went to New Mexico, once, for work. Cattle driving. You ever been there?”

Marco blinked, wrongfooted by my change in subject. “Why, I don’t believe I have,” he replied, the lie sliding off his tongue so perfect I had to stop and think about my perhaps mistaking him for someone else. “New Mexico’s a little out of my area. Better horseflesh up in the Rockies.”  

“Ever heard of the N Bar N ranch?” I asked.

Marco didn’t even look my way as he replied, “Can’t say I have, no.”

“They run different cattle to these, black and whites, like the Native ponies.”

“What,” Marco said, his voice bordering on a bite I didn’t like the sound of, “are you getting at, I wonder?”

I should have known to stop there. I knew better than to keep pushing the way I was – but I had the wind up me by now and a fire in my belly. I looked him dead in the eye, this Marco Bodt, and said, “I’m saying that I met a man in New Mexico, where some ten head of black and white cattle vanished without a trace. Now, unless there are two ‘Marco Bodts’ running about-”

“- or an enemy,” Marco added. He didn’t even look maddened – just confused. God, he were a better play actor than the ones on the saloon stage. “What a fancy you got yourself worked up into. I never knew someone could write such a tall tale as you have.” He shook his head. “Anyways, even if I did steal cattle – what difference does it make to you, the cowpoke tasked with driving ‘em?”

I stopped short. There Marco was, practically _admitting_ he was the one stole them cattle, and he asks me a thing like that. I sniffed and drew my collar up higher. “That don’t matter none. It’s the principle.”

Marco fell silent, musing on the fact as his mare took the last few steps to him, ears pricked and tail flicking behind her in a relaxed kind of way. “Well,” he said, breaking his silence, “You’re certainly a rarity in these parts, kid.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

Marco smiled and pursed his lips, making kissing noises at the mare. She stuck her head over the pen and butted him affectionately in the chest the way Buck used to with me, a friendly whicker escaping her. Marco’s smile only widened as he scratched at a spot between her eyes. “You’re loyal,” he said to me as he fussed her, “and that ain’t always a good thing to be. Don’t want to get yourself taken for a ride.”

“And I suppose you know all there is to know about playing loyal men for what they’re worth.”

Marco’s head jerked up. He regarded me, not through a smile, but through a frown. “And why would you go and say a thing like that?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Intuition.”

Marco’s eyes sparked. “That’s a big word for a cowpoke.”

“I read,” I answered.

Marco was staring me down with a look that was equal parts confusion, hurt and annoyance – though I couldn’t be sure of which one of those was true. The mare nuzzled him, asking for more attention, but he ignored her. “Well, ain’t you learned.”

I kept my head high, fending off the heat that was rising fast to my cheeks under Marco’s scrutiny. “I just say what’s on my mind.”

“Dangerous.”

“But honest. Honest man’s the best kind, so I was taught.”

Marco said nothing. We both stood together, watching the Appaloosa beg for affection and prance around her pen when she was done with it. Marco’s gaze wandered to me plenty; I felt the burn of it like the sun on my skin when he figured I weren’t paying no attention, and wanted to ask him what the hell he thought he was gawping at. But then I supposed he weren’t doing anything wrong. He was sizing me up, the way he had the grey stallion in the corral, and I couldn’t help but size him up too.

Marco pushed away first, giving his mare a pat of farewell as he went. “I’ll be keeping my eye on you, kid,” he said, and I knew it to be a promise – and maybe even a threat.

* * *

Marco continued to turn up and work with the stallion every day or so. He worked on him for the better half of a month. He started off by hopping over the fence and spooking the horse enough to send him galloping helter-skelter around his wooden prison like a merry go round, his tail streaming behind him like a great banner. He’d scare him, then he’d turn his back and wait for the stallion to come to him. Sometimes he did. Other times he’d charge and send Marco scrambling for the nearest divide to duck under.

The others thought him a crackpot, someone who’d gone mad in the sun but weren’t man enough to admit it. I stayed away, Marco’s warning ringing in my ears. I also knew better than to stoke Oluo’s suspicion about my being to do with the missing stuff from the other ranch hands. If I was seen lurking, no matter what I was doing I’d be writing my own arrest document soon after.

So I would watch Marco from the other fields, when I was cutting a calf from the herd for branding or fixing the fences that were getting broke more often than usual. In the midst of all the ranch’s bad luck, Marco was there, a dark shape in the middle of a sandy corral with a storm of a stallion turning about him. I didn’t go to the Appaloosa’s pen again, and Marco never sought me out. We kept out of each other’s way, and I figure that was for the better. Back then, I might have ridden to the marshals if I’d had a scrap of proof about the rustling in New Mexico and it would have concluded a mighty poor story.

Couldn’t prevent a man from being curious, though. Like a kid who’s told not to touch a naked flame, the urge to know more about the bronco buster with a smile like a big kid was something that felt electric. I didn’t get curious about folk all that often; but if they were the interesting sort, they would often get me wondering. And Marco Bodt was very much an interesting sort.

Truth was, he fascinated me. I supposed it was to do with the way he had this giddy sort of feeling about him, like a spinning top painted all bright colours. I’d seen him run a horse in Telluride like it was the devil, but he handled the grey stallion gently, as though he’d break. He was friendly but kept to himself, never coming into the bunks and mixing with the other ranch hands. He teased yet was careful, and I swore I’d never seen him tease a man but me. I hadn’t rightly met a man like him before, and don’t reckon I’ve ever met one since.

The more I saw of him, if only from afar, just granted me more questions than it did answers. One of those questions came up in the evening of a hard days’ ride. I had been looking for a lost heifer (yet more bad luck) that had vanished the day before for the better part of a day. I finally found her in the north pasture, struggling with a coil of wire that had gotten itself wrapped around her leg. I nudged her back to the herd at an achingly slow pace due to her slight limp, made harder with the fact that my mustang kept nipping at her rump and upsetting her. I came back from the fields cloaked in sleep and with a mental note to bring her medicine in the morning. The promise of a solid surface to lie down on weren’t far from my mind either, truth be told, so I may have been daydreaming just a bit.

My eyes, masked by sleep, wandered to movement in the gloom of the corral, and I halted my horse at the sound of a heavy whicker. It came from the shelter; at first I figured it was just the stallion calm enough to bed down for the night, but then I noticed him stood about a foot away. His ears were pitched forward in a polite kind of way, watching whatever it was in his shelter.

As I got near I saw the familiar form of Marco, curled up like a question mark between the bundles of clean hay and straw. He’d left his hat on one of the taller bales, and his hair was dark and scruffy against the bed of straw he’d fashioned for himself. He had no blanket over him, though it was a cold night, and every now and then a shiver would course through him like a ripple on a lake surface.

The stallion was peering at him, neck outstretched and nostrils flaring. I had to stifle a laugh at the clearly bemused look he had on his face. The feeling died, though, when I saw how peaceful the man looked in sleep. Marco had an uncomplicated expression, one that weren’t creased with the events of the day, and as he turned over onto his side and let another shiver loose, he let out a long, heavy sigh that made the stallion snort and step away.

I moved back to the mustang to untack him, sliding the saddle off his still steaming back and leading him out to the paddock containing the other horses, thinking hard. When I’d been out on the plains with a group of men, watching over the cattle in the dead of night, I’d seen them sleep. I saw ‘em snore obnoxiously loud and roll over in their packs, and seen men twitch and jerk with the memory of riding or being chased down. There hadn’t been no movement from Marco in that shelter. He slept like the dead, save for the shivering, and I hadn’t ever seen a man sleep so well in a place so uncomfy. He had to be exhausted, I thought then. But why didn’t he come into the bunkhouse with the rest of us?

There might have been an answer that chimed to the same tune as my own; perhaps people were too much for him, perhaps he preferred the open air and the quiet. Somehow, I knew that weren’t the same as my own afflictions but it was nice to pretend, at least for a minute, that there was someone out there who thought the way I did.

When I passed the corral again, I made sure to fling my spare saddle blanket over the fence closest to the shelter and walked away sharpish before the heavy _thump_ of the blanket in the straw roused Marco from his sleep. The next morning, I woke early to find he had folded it neatly over the corral fence and was washing his face in one of the barrels kept for that purpose. He lifted his head with a gasp, the cold water clinging to his chin and hair like small pearls, and caught my eye. We stared at one another for a moment, just a moment, before he offered a smile and I looked away. It was a thanks, one I didn’t want – but appreciated anyhow.

Marco got the stallion carrying a saddle in less than a week, Connie told me. He got the stallion carrying him a week after. There was no fight between ‘em, just a connection of trust and acceptance that passed between them when Marco mounted up for the first time. The stallion threw his head around and shifted his weight the way all youngsters do when they ain’t used to a man on their back, but Marco’s gentle encouragement got him taking one foot in front of the other in no time. Like a foal learning how to walk, the stallion found it hard at first, but got better as the days stretched by. He came to accept Marco on his back and actually started to whinny for him when he walked across the yard. There was no edge to the stallion’s eyes no more, no snapping or biting, and when Marco grew near he even butted his head into his chest and demanded an ear scratch the same way his Appaloosa did. There weren’t no trace of mankiller in his blood now.

If only Marco could gentle people as well as he did horses. Oluo’s mood grew fouler as the bad luck continued to shoehorn its way into the day to day running of the ranch, and that meant I bore the brunt of it. Each time there was a problem, or something hadn’t gone right, he fixed me with a glare and demand I set about fixing it. I nodded my head and did it like the good kid I’d been brought up to be, but by God did I want to whack him into next September. Suddenly, Connie’s warning about killing the bastard if he was there much longer sounded less drastic than I’d first thought.

It was due to Oluo, mingled with the constant glances and the less than friendly atmosphere in the bunks, that got me staying out after dark in the fields. Work was usually the kind that was especially hard and with little point to it, which meant I was often out after dark finishing things up. It didn’t matter to me none; I found the bunks the kind of stifling that sent a bird fluttering in my chest – a bird that very much wanted out. So I would take my Mustang, bad- tempered though he was, and ride out amongst the lowing herds and fretful horses of the night.

Animals, even spooked or dangerous ones, don’t give the same kinda tightness in my chest that humans do; it’s a dumb feeling really, the kind I really shoulda gotten used to in my time roaming from place to place, but it turns out that keeping my head down and not saying a word helps that tight feeling. It don’t take a hold quite so strongly, at least. Scared humans, after all, are plenty dangerous. You can predict the turn of a cow, or the bolt of a horse – it’s far harder to tell when a gun’ s about to get pointed at you.

I’d gotten myself a cough, probably due to the smoke in the bunkhouse instead of an ill omen, and kept my bandana about my face to stifle the racking noises I was making as I walked my horse through the cattle. Anything was enough to set ‘em off running lately; Connie told me that a storm was coming, something the herd could feel in their feet, and as I looked up at the bruised clouds overhead, I was inclined to agree with him.

The herd shifted as a single being around me, fitting me in and pushing me out the way they would a disobedient calf. I moved with them, careful to keep the Mustang under control and stop him from biting at the ones who got too close and too curious. The sky was an ink blot around me now, the clouds turning from a purple to a threatening navy kinda colour. The colour, as we all knew, of thunder.

The cows were calling to one another, huddling tighter to prepare for the oncoming storm. This weren’t the sort of place I wanted to be when the rain started. The cattle were wound up enough – if things got rough, they could run. I thought back to New Mexico, to the men with their chiding laughter and taunts, and swallowed my pride. I began, in that threatening Wyoming evening, to sing to them. There was only one song I know, the one ingrained into my memory:

“ _Down in the valley, the valley so low_  
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow   
Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow   
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow…”

Some of the cows quit grazing and lifted their heads to listen. Even the mustang, snappy and angry though he was, seemed to relax under me and drop his head just that little bit more. It gave me the confidence, mixed with the knowhow that nobody was around, to carry on that ridiculous song, even as the clouds swelled and rolled above us.

Now I never know why I never heard the hoofbeats coming, or my horse sensed another drawing near enough to pull towards them, but I continued to sing that bittersweet little song until I heard, faintly, someone else’s voice accompanying it.

“ _Write me a letter_ , _send it by mail… send it in care of the Birmingham jail…”_

I halted my mustang with a jolt, horror washing through me in a cold shower as I spotted the figure walking steadily towards us, his horse’s head down and his hat pulled low over his face. As he grew nearer, I recognised the neat little hocks and large, proud head of the appaloosa I’d been admiring so long. My horror only grew stronger. That meant…

“Y’know, that really is a nice song you’re singing there.” The stranger tilted his hat up to reveal a dark bandana pulled over half his face and nothing but his brown eyes smiling back at me. “Mighty sad, though. I wouldn’t be adverse to somethin’ a bit more cheerful.”

I didn’t move. Every part of me was froze to the spot. “B-Bodt,” I acknowledged, with a shaky kinda nod.

“Kirschtein.” He nodded, those eyes twinkling like precious things. “Got your name this time. Beats from callin’ you Songbird.”

I almost twitched at the name in his mouth.  It felt like the first drink after a long thirst, and I weren’t too happy about that.

“You remembered,” I blurted.

I recovered quick.

“Y-You’re from Telluride. And New Mexico.”

“I get around, sure.” He let his mare have her head and she dropped her head to graze. “Knew I recognised you from someplace else. Being in the dark tends to make seein’ a hell of a lot harder.”

“You lied,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” Marco sighed, his expression hidden behind the bandana. “I do a lot of that. It’s a sickness, really.”

I knew that I shoulda run. I should have driven my heels into the mustang’s sides, come hell or high water, and took off back to the ranch to raise an alarm. It made sense now, the missing items and the strange feeling about the place, and I had to report it. I had to get the Sheriff of Sundance out here, and fast.

But of course, these is all the things I _should’ve_ done. I did none of them. Instead, that flicker of curiosity that sparked that day in the corral flared in me like a rogue wind. I wet my lips and nudged my horse closer to him. “What d’you want, Marco Bodt?” I asked.

Marco leaned back in his saddle, dropping his reins entirely and folding his arms against his chest. “Well, about twenty head of cattle would do nicely, since you’re asking.”

I flinched at how brazenly he’d said it. There was no defending words or helpless shrugs to be seen. He was just smiling that dumb smile of his, I could see it through his disguise. Was this little more than a game to him? My embarrassment at being so wrong about him twisted about into something more, something that bit into my temper and made it bleed. “You _bastard_ ,” I spat.

He chuckled. “Well now, that’s some mighty strong words coming from the likes of you.”

“And who am I, exactly?”

“A pup who don’t know his master,” Marco replied. “You’re too busy being loyal that you don’t think about who’s kicking you.” He paused. “Too scared to feel it, perhaps.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “I… I ain’t afraid of no one,” I stammered.

He tilted his head, surveying me the same way he did so often. “Then you’re a fool, or an idiot, or both.”

“Those are the same things, and I ain’t afraid,” I said, my voice stronger now.

Marco Bodt actually laughed. “By God, you’re an awful liar. You should get employ in one of those town brothels – men would pay well for your lies.”

I wanted to shoot him. I gave my mustang the nudge to move forward, even shifting back to reach my holster, but the Appaloosa’s head came up and she sidestepped to meet us. I frowned, and moved my mustang back. She followed. Marco let her do it all, just kept his arms folded and kept that hidden smile on his goddamn face. “Ain’t no need for all that now. Just toying with you a little bit. Kinda surprised with you, actually. Lotta folk like you lose that spark out here, soon enough.” He clicked his tongue and the Appaloosa responded eagerly, stepping up alongside my mustang so we were close enough to touch. “You could be a good man someday, Jean Kirschtein, and that’s a lot coming from the likes of me.”

“I’m flattered,” I spat. “Wish I could say the same for you.”

I felt for my holster, but the moment I brushed my fingers against the top of my revolver handle, Marco clicked his tongue again. This time it was the chiding sort. He brought out a revolver of his own, a far better one, and levelled it casually at my chest. “You really don’t wanna be doing that, Songbird. I got men all around here just waiting for me to blow your brains out, and I don’t wanna be the one who gives them their sport.”

My hand twitched away, my instinct overriding all conscious thought. Where were they? Had I been so mixed up in singing my goddamn song that I hadn’t noticed them slip into the paddock and fan out to the outer edges, or linger in the longer grasses with their rifles trained on me?

“It’s alright,” Marco cut into my thoughts, soothing me like a nervous horse, “they ain’t gonna hurt you. We don’t wanna hurt no one. We just want the cattle and we’ll be on our way.”

“What do you want, really?”

Marco blinked, a mite thrown by the question. “Beg pardon?”

“What do you really want outta this?” I pressed. “Bein’ a criminal, stealin’ cattle and scarin’ cowpokes, what’s the point? The law is gonna chase you, and catch you, and probably hang you. Is it worth that?”

Marco took a moment to answer. When he did, it was hushed and gentler than anything else he’d said yet. “Of course it is,” he answered. “I’d rather die running than live on my knees in the dirt, breaking my back for a man who don’t know my name.” He lowered the revolver, seeming to know that I wasn’t going to try any funny business. “As for what I want… same as you, I suppose. A better life for myself, the kind a man deserves, and better than the one I left. Now,” his eyes bored into mine, “it’s your turn to answer a question.”

I stared at him. I couldn’t believe what this foolhardy idiot was playing at. “This ain’t a goddamn parlour game,” I hissed. “I could run right back to Oluo right now and-”

“Well, you and I both know you won’t do a thing like that.” Marco hadn’t even moved. He still sat there in his saddle, watching me calm as a cat, and that did little to help my temper.

I gritted my teeth through my answer. “Won’t I?”

“No. You won’t.” His confidence irked me. “Wanna know why?”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Why?”

“Cus you’re still here.” The face behind the bandana was smiling again, I could tell. The bastard was enjoying this. “If you really wanted me caught you’d have high-tailed it outta here the moment you saw me.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. He had a point. Why hadn’t I just ran? Why had I let him come to me, all smiles and charm, and get myself into this mess? It was the adventurous part of my nature, the part I thought was stone cold dead from my childhood, that had roused itself from slumber at the thought of coming face to face with an outlaw. Maybe it was also loneliness, out here on my own in the wake of every soul on the ranch thinking me a thief or a worthless piece of dirt. Maybe I wanted someone who smiled at my songs and spoke to me with warmth. I don’t know how, but I knew Marco understood that.

I cleared my throat and looked down at the neck of my horse. “I guess I thought you didn’t just ride up here to rustle cattle.”

Marco was silent. I didn’t look at him. The clouds that had been threatening to break for so long finally began to split, the rain falling in gentle drops at first, but then came faster and harder. The cattle around us began to move away towards the shelter of the trees, heads down against the onslaught of weather. I stayed where I was, the mustang more than used to the wilderness and nothing but the sound of men’s shouts snatched away on the noise of the downpour.

“So go on then,” I asked against the wind, “What was your question?” I asked so quiet that I hoped it would get lost in the noise of cattle and men and rain.

When I looked up, Marco was watching me. His eyes cut through the rain, cut through to where I was sat, soaked and shivering on my horse, and I saw those eyes soften. “I reckon you’ve already answered it,” he said. I opened my mouth to question him, but he shook his head. “Just… just know that this life is what you make of it. You got to grasp it, before it runs away with you.”

With that he tipped his hat to me, pushing it back down low over his face to hide those eyes of his and he was gone. He spun the appaloosa about and spurred her onwards into the rain and the gang that awaited him. I watched him go, getting soaked to the bone and more besides whilst they rounded up a good twenty head of cattle, as Marco promised, and drove them away from the rest of the herd.

I stifled all remnants of anger and wrenched the mustang around, digging my heels into his sides as I shouted a sharp, ‘halloa!”’ to get him gee’d up enough to get gone. He raced back to the ranch at a full gallop, but that was only cus the thunder was beginning to rumble and I weren’t in control of him.

I paused before going into the bunkhouse that night. I looked up at the ranch house, squinting through the sheets of rain at the perfect little front door, the child’s drawing windows and the hateful man who lived inside it. I turned back to the bunkhouse, back to the silence, and stepped straight on through. I told no one.

* * *

The next few days passed in a blur of toiling the earth, preparing the remaining number of cattle for their annual drive out West, and telling everyone for the thousandth time that I didn’t see no rustlers. They knew I stayed out later than most men, my bunk empty when they slipped abed and full when they rose in the morning. They also seemed to know I was out the night the cattle disappeared. It was enough to warrant a bombardment of questions, not all of ‘em friendly, but at least they were asking me what I’d seen instead of asking if I was the one that did it.

I found that lying came easy to me, easier than it had before. After the first adamant responses I gave to the curious, the insistence got weaker. Connie, though, kept looking at me like he knew something I weren’t telling, and I made sure to keep out of his way. It was hard; Connie and I were the ones who stayed together after all, and no Connie meant no one to talk to about anything. Still, it was for the best. I didn't want him guessing or saying that he'd seen me. My lying had grown better, sure enough, but I figured it wouldn't take much for a thread to unravel.

Oluo raged about his lost cattle for the better part of a week. I kept out of his way too, choosing to take vigils that lasted hours up in the paddocks. The rustlers, apparently, had known what they were doing; they'd taken a handful of very good heifers, and a bullock Oluo had been wanting to keep for breeding stock. I couldn't help smirking at the thought of Marco Bodt and his cronies getting wealthy off Oluo's cows.

Strangely, Oluo never suspected Marco. I heard him talking to some of his friends as they rode around the ranch one day after the theft, and after the usual curses in the name of whoever and whatnot that stole 'em, Oluo added, "Still, saved myself some money. That Bodt, the bronco buster? Haven't seen hide nor hair of him for a while now. Didn't have to pay him a cent for that breaking job he did with the stallion. Just never turned up to claim his wage. More fool him."

If he'd had the nerve to turn up and get that wage to tuck in his pocket, I really would have thought him a genius.

The stallion, to my surprise, hadn't vanished along with the cows. I'd expected to wake up the next morning to see him gone too, spirited away from his corral like he'd never been there in the first place. But there he'd been, watching us with a degree of suspicion as we set about the yard chores and whinnying for a man that would never come. After that first week, I took to visiting him in his corral, if only to stop the racket he made if no one did. Guess I felt sorry for the creature, left behind with no soul to pay attention to him.

At first he stayed away, pressing himself into the back of the corral and snorting a nervous warning whenever I ducked under the fence, but there was a big difference between the man I'd been when I'd first seen him and the man I was now. The main difference was that I weren't afraid of him no more. I think he knew that, and he quit throwing his weight around and plunging and rearing after the first few visits of mine. This, after all, had been what Marco had done with him. Sure he was broke, but that didn't mean he was some gentle lamb that coulda been ridden by anyone. He needed more training, really, but since Marco had skipped town there weren't much hope of that. He stopped calling for Marco, at least.

I had managed to scrape together a few dollars to get a book from the Sundance market, and spent hours sat in the corral reading it, even when the light failed and the world went black. I could imagine what was written in those pages, and the feel of a book in my hands reminded me of home. After a few days of this, the stallion came to stand beside me as I read, and sometimes dared to lie down beside me. Horses are herd animals first and foremost, after all - he missed his herd back in the canyons, and he was cravin' for some company from any living thing.

I read to him sometimes, my voice spooking him some nights and soothing him others, and eventually he came to not only accept my presence in his corral but seek it. If I rode past on my mustang to get to the big pastures, he would trot over to the fence and stick his head over, trumpeting a whinny at the top of his lungs.

"That stallion's in love with you, I swear it's true," Connie remarked. I'd give him a whack, but secretly I was mighty proud of the reaction I got from the mankiller.

And I’d like to have it known that it weren't because he had a link to Marco. At that time I admired Bodt, sure, but I also hated him. Loyalty to the animal was what kept me by the stallion's side. It gave me a project, something to work on that took my mind off the hard work and the lonesome nights. And, no matter how much I tried, I got attached to the stallion some. At times I would wonder if I could ever buy him off Oluo, leave my grumpy little mongrel in the dirt corrals and ride off on the back of a Spanish blooded monster. Then I would wake up and realise it for the impossibility that it was.

Things didn't change, however, til exactly a month after Marco had made off with the cattle.

I was out on the range, having roped a couple of cows that needed some medicine shoved down their throats. Armin, Connie and I had struggled with one of the older cows to get her on the floor and get the syrupy, stinking liquid down into her gut, and I'd narrowly avoided a kick in the head a couple of times. Needless to say, when we finally mounted up and got on our way, we was looking forward to getting home. Still, we were in good spirits. "Looking forward to that sweet paycheck someday soon," Armin sighed as he nudged his mount closer to mine. The mustang laid his ears back but I kept him in line.

"Don't count on it," Connie muttered, ever the optimist. "Ain't nothing gonna be sweet about this money. Mine's going straight into buying myself a new harmonica. Can't believe some rat pinched it for no good reason. None of 'em can even play the harmonica."

I stayed quiet. I didn't like to think that Marco was a common pickpocket as well as a cattle rustler; that weren't in the books I'd read about outlaws, and Marco was close to becoming one of those. I was busy thinking about throwing a saddle on the grey stallion and seeing if his acceptance of a man on his back only extended to the dark haired, rustler type.

We got back to the ranch and started to dismount and slide the saddles off our tired horses' backs, when I heard the scream. It broke through the argument Armin and Connie were having about the merits of harmonica playing, and tore through my ears. My heart dropped down to my boots. I recognised that scream. It weren't no human scream, that was for sure.

"Jean," Connie warned, but it was too late. I'd dropped my mustang's reins and bolted for the corral, really hoping it wasn't what I thought it was. Another scream and the hiss of steam made me run faster, and what I saw when I got within sight of the corral was something I weren't ever gonna forget.

Oluo had hired a handful of the ranch hands to wrestle the grey stallion onto the ground the way Marco had done all those weeks ago. This was far more violent though, with more ropes and shouts and other horses rushing around him in a whirl of colour and noise. I counted more than five ropes on him, keeping him on the floor as he screamed and kicked. One of the hands, one I knew to be a good blacksmith, was working a bellows nearby, and another was brandishing a long black iron with the ranch's brand on its end. It glowed menacingly, full of the promise of pain and torment, and that sight broke my temper once and for all.

"OLUO," I shouted. Before anyone could stop me, I’d ducked under the fence and strode towards him, that temper crackling at my edges. "What in the goddamn hell do you think you're doing?!"

Oluo peered over at me from his place, as always, atop his mare. "Ah, Kirschtein,” he greeted calmly. “I wondered when you were gonna turn up."

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to drag him off his horse and beat him into the dust. But I stopped short, hands tightening into fists as I fought to control every urge in my body. "What. Do you think. You're doing?" I repeated, grinding my teeth with every syllable.

"Why, that's easy. I'm marking my stock." Oluo fixed me with a sardonic smile. "Figured it was a good idea, what with this rustling and all. Don't want no one else running off with my property and getting away with it now, do we?"

"You can't brand him!"

His smile slipped. "And why can't I?"

I kept coming all the while, pushing one of the hands out of the way and kneeling over the prone body in the dust. The stallion stilled at the sight of me, but that gleam in his eye was back, the one that told me he'd do whatever it took to get out of the situation he found himself in. I shushed him softly, running a hand down his neck to stop it from jumping and twitching. When I finally looked up at Oluo, the rage came back in sparks. "He's not trained up proper yet. He needs more time before you even think about going near him with a branding iron."

"Is that so?" Oluo quirked an eyebrow. "And this is coming from a certified expert in horseflesh, is it?"

"I know a trained animal when I see one, and this ain't one of them." I curled my thumb against the stallion's skin softly, encouraging him to keep still the way I'd remembered Marco had done. "If you brand him now, if you cause him that pain, you ain't never gonna gain his trust. He’ll kill you as soon as look at you."

"And you know all this because you stay out here after dark and talk to it, is that right?"

I stumbled. "I...what?"

"I've seen you," Oluo said, the grin coming back on his face. "You come in here at night, when you think no one’s watching. You sit here like _he_ used to,” he used the word to describe Marco as though it were a curse he were uttering in church, “and you speak to this piece of horseflesh like you think it’s gonna speak back. It’s a dumb animal, Kirschtein, nothing more.”

“There ain’t no such thing as a dumb animal,” I spat, “though I know some men that fit the description.”

Oluo’s features twisted into something I knew I shouldn’t have liked. “I bet you were wanting to buy it off me, weren’t you? Well, I’m tellin’ you now that you ain’t getting within a mile of this horse. I paid good money, I ain’t giving up a fine-blooded stallion to someone like you.”

“And who am I?” I shot back, all misgivings flying from my breast. “Who the fuck am I, that makes you think you can talk to me the way you do?”

The others winced, but Oluo simply chuckled. “Well. Think you’ve answered your own question with that language, Kirschtein.” When the humour faded, what was underneath was cold and unfeeling. “What you are is a man who’d be dead if he hadn’t been brought here. You are a man who ain’t got no hope in all your born days of taking a horse like this, or running a ranch like mine, or being any sort of man at all. Don’t go kidding yourself that you’re worth anything more than the sweat you drop or the wages I pay you.” He paused. “And even that’s too goddamn much. You’ve been here long enough. You’ll leave after the cattle drive, and I ain’t never wanting to see your hide around here a day longer.”

Well. That stopped me dead as a doornail. I’d never thought myself better than anyone, or someone who was destined for a great thing, but I still had dreams. It was healthy, my Pa always said, to have those dreams. They got you up in the morning, got you working hard and saving up and pushing for something, _anything,_ to be worth it all. I kept my hopes like butterflies in jars, wondering if one day they’d be let out to fly again. Oluo, whether he realised it or not, had taken those jars and dashed them to the ground. He’d killed the butterflies inside.

“Now,” Oluo said, through gritted teeth. “Step aside. Or so help me God I will make sure you ain’t never getting another job in this here area.”

I stepped away, rising from the stallion and going back to the corral fence. It was one of the hardest walks I’ve ever had to take, especially when I heard Oluo over my shoulder order the hand I’d pushed away to brand the stallion no matter how hard he struggled. If I tried to interfere, he added, I was to be given the same treatment.

At that moment, I didn’t think I would’ve uttered a word of protest.

* * *

Desperation, as I said before, is a strange thing. It’s a worm, I said, that gets into your brain and changes the way you see things. Soon, everything becomes an opportunity, and every day becomes the potential of an escape route.

I battled with my thoughts long and hard, cooped up in the bunkhouse with the others – I daren’t stray out, not now I knew Oluo was waiting for any opportunity to get me out quicker – and in that regard, I grew strong. When a man got nothing left to lose, he starts thinking that any option, anything at all, is better than the one he’s currently in.

Connie knew it too; he’d found work come his way in the form of a telegram from an ailing uncle of his, and he was due to leave soon. Oluo didn’t know. Connie weren’t gonna tell him nothing. He would leave, he told me, under the cover of night. “Feel like a goddamn ancestor, here against my will and sneaking away like some sorta weasel,” he said to me on his last night, huddled beside me for warmth whilst the others smoked and gamed. “But I can’t see no other choice.”

“No,” I agreed, taking the cigarette I’d been offered and bringing it to my lips. It was a habit I’d taken up after the branding. It helped me think, through all the choking. “You were right, back then. There ain’t no choice for us here. We work, we sleep, we die. That’s all there is to it.”

Connie’s eyes wandered away from me, out the open door to the skeletal corral with its one occupant inside. The stallion had stopped calling after the branding. He didn’t want no attention to come to himself, in case something happened again. “Y’know, you’re welcome to come with me,” Connie said, breaking through my thoughts. “My Uncle won’t mind. Heck, he’d probably love the company. You could help me keep the farm going, we could sell off some of the sheep. Handsome profits to be made, Jean, handsome profits indeed.”

I couldn’t find it in myself to get excited. Why should I? It was just another pipe dream, another butterfly that’d get crushed underfoot eventually. I took another drag of my cigarette and exhaled it in a small ring of cloud. “Not this time, partner. That’s your dream. I gotta find my own.”

Connie clearly didn’t expect that. “You ain’t gonna stay here, surely?”

“Can’t, remember? Oluo gave me my marching orders,” I retorted. “I just… I’m gonna strike out on my own for a while. Need to think things through.”

“Last time you struck out alone someone found you dying of thirst just outside of town,” Connie pointed out, which I hated him for. “What’s different this time?”

I’d followed his gaze to the corral. “I ain’t a sad sap no more,” was my answer.

I promised to see Connie leave, but I overslept. When I awoke the next morning, his bunk was empty and Mags was gone from the paddocks, along with a couple of other horses. Someone, evidently, had taken Connie up on his offer. Oluo either didn’t notice or didn’t care, for he never showed in the yard that morning. It was a Sunday, and he was due at the Church in town. We, of course, didn’t have the chance to go along too; we would be lazing about the ranch polishing tack and seeing to our horses, and muttering curses against Oluo’s name. Of course, that was the usual Sunday. This Sunday, I had other ideas.

The men all slept in later due to the lack of Oluo shouting that they get up and stop being layabout dunderheads, and so it was early in the morning I slipped out of the bunkhouse with a single book, some rations and a change of clothes. The morning was a tender one, with a sky that was painted the pink of a blushing lady and the purple of forget me nots. I was making my way towards the paddocks, ready to whistle for my mustang, when a trumpeting whinny caught my ear. I turned to see the grey stallion, ears pricked and nostrils flaring, with his head stuck over the corral fencing. His shoulder was still gummed from the branding – it was an ugly scar against his raindrop dapples.

I hesitated. This was the moment the worm of desperation wriggled into my mind, at long last, and took it for its own. I had no job. No prospects. Not much of a life at all, if truth was told. What I did have was that desperation, that worming little scavenger that gnawed on my morals til there was little left. I thought back to Marco, and how he’d spun his appaloosa around in the midst of a rainstorm to tell me that my life was my own. I thought of Oluo, who told me I’d never equate to anything and it was worthless to even try.

Well. I knew which odds I wanted to take.

I dropped my saddle, my worn-out old secondhand saddle, and strode over to the corral. The stallion let me come, throwing up his head in suspicion as I snatched up the saddle and bridle some dolt had left hanging across the top of the fence. There was a pack along with it – a pack that included a fancy gilded revolver. I slid it loose as the stallion danced on the other side of the paddock, aware that something was afoot, and looked it over. US army issue, single action, with a handle made of some sorta ebony wood. It was the most beautiful gun I’d ever saw. I checked its chambers and saw that it was fully loaded. It was the sorta gun that would be able to stop a conversation, I figured, and I didn’t hesitate in shoving it back into the pack.

It took some time for the stallion to accept the tack on him; we danced about a while, me and him, until I cornered him in the corral and buckled the saddle on tight. When I mounted up and the stallion skittered sideways, I tried to ease the frantic racing of my heart in my chest.

I thought about stopping. Honest to god, I thought about getting back down off that stallion, putting it all outta my mind and going off to the fields again. But then I saw the horizon. I saw the silvery glint of a future out there, waiting for my say- so. And goddamn, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

Did I know I was teetering on the edge, that I was about to take a leap into the life of an outlaw and become one of the most sought after and chased men in America? Of course I didn’t. Back then, I was a kid with crushed dreams and a score to settle with the life I’d been handed. All I wanted to do was run, and keep running until I couldn’t run no more.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I took the horse, the saddle and the Colt single action revolver, and I ran like hell.

_~ End of Act One~_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is the end of Act one!
> 
> Act two will involve Jean getting into cahoots with a gang, committing a few robberies here and there, and you'll see a LOT more of Marco. So there's that to look forward to! :)
> 
> Thanks again for supporting and reading, I really do appreciate it <3


	7. Act 2, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so we have the beginning of Act 2: The Outlaw Trail. 
> 
> After stealing a horse, a saddle and a gun, Jean has thrown himself into a whole heap of trouble. What follows is the account of his stay in the Sundance County jail, his fight between 'going straight' and continuing on the criminal path carved out for him, and whether he'll stop letting Marco Bodt's words get to him...
> 
> There's a LOT in this chapter. Hence the length. But this is where the action really kicks off, so I hope you're ready for the ride! 
> 
> A/N: there is an implied (and one strong mention) tw about attempted non-con assault in the prison, and there is also animal death in this chapter too. Just a heads up! 
> 
> As always I can be found on tumblr here: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com or on Twitter here: @purple_tealeaf. Or you can leave some comments here! I love comments. I adore them. Please comment.

As a man grows, he’s likely to change. It’s not something you can choose, but it’s certainly something you can feel happening. For instance, I began to change from the moment I stepped off the Pennsylvania train at fourteen. The land, the work, the Blizzard, it all broke me down to the parts of myself that couldn’t be broke down no more. I was a cowpoke, I was a horse-breaker, I was a man with a chip on his shoulder and a fight to be picking. Like a smith’s forge I was broken, sure, but I was also brought together again, remoulded into a different soul with scores to settle.

I suppose jail was one such forge.

See, stealing a horse with a brand makes it easy to trace. And a scruff of a cowhand that lopes into town on a fine horse and saddle is bound to draw some attention to himself. Don’t know what the hell I was thinking, looking back on it now, but I have to remember that I was a dumb hot-headed kid back then – a kid who didn’t know no better.

So I was caught. I was guilty as sin. I was jailed. It happens, of course, but I never expected it to happen to me. Walking into the Sundance County jail in chains was easily one of the scariest experiences of my life – I was only young after all, barely scratching eighteen when I was taken in, and I’d never got into no trouble with the law before. Could barely walk into the cell without someone propping me up; I’m sure I would’a fainted clean away if they hadn’t.

I don’t like to think of my time in prison, nor the finer details of my capture. It’s a thing that haunts like the cruellest ghost, poking and proddin’ at your innards until, like bile, the memory comes up your throat bitter and stinking. The fear catches hold of you like a coyote, at your throat before you knows it, and it don’t let go for no money in the world. All I will say, though, is that being in that jail was being like an animal, caged and terrified outta my wits. I was a creature, dark and small, that was denied its freedom.

In the deepest throes of fear, when I knew nothing but the sickening of my stomach and the sounds of men shouting, swearing, cooing at me, I asked myself the same thing over and over: Why had I taken the stallion? Why had I taken that fancy saddle, with all the gilding that someone was bound to miss? And why in the hell had I taken the _gun_? The answer my jailors gave me was that I was simply bad. The line the government drew in the sand to show what was right and what was wrong made it so; I was a bad man, a sinnin’ man, but I didn’t feel like no sinner. I just felt…angry.

My answer, the real answer I told to myself almost as much as the questions, was always the same – because I had to. Because, if I hadn’t, I’d have died on that goddamn ranch. Because a man with a crooked smile and an Appaloosa mare told me I was worth more than the lot I’d been given. This was the answer that turned my eyes to steel and my person to bitter defence.

It changed when they came for me.

“Get up, you bastard!”

The boot that was driven into my stomach weren’t exactly the wake up call I’d been hoping for. Uncurling myself from where I’d fallen the day before, I saw my cell mate against the wall with his eyes wild like a rabbit’s. I squinted. If it weren’t that oaf waking me for sport, then it had to be…

“I said get up!”

I grunted when I saw the boot move again, just to show that I was awake and that if whoever it was kicked me again he’d sure as hell know it. I got to my feet slowly, trying to hide the grimace that wanted to come squirming to the surface. The kick had made contact with a bruise from an inmate brawl a few days prior, and still smarted some – not that I’d ever admit to that, of course. You truly had to be mad to show weakness in a jail like Sundance.

There was two men staring me down, both in the jailor’s uniform, and I tried to stop my lip from curling at the sight of them. Sometimes, the guards were worse than the inmates. “The marshal got a pardon for you,” one of the guards, the older one, informed me. “You’re free to go. Good behaviour they say. Guess what they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em.”

I squinted up at him, his words ringing on ears that didn’t quite believe ‘em. “Yer lettin’ me go?” I slurred, still drunk on the promise of sleep.

“Unless you wanna stick around.” There was a nasty slide to his tone as he added, “Know some of the men here gonna miss having you around to look at.”

I spat on the floor in answer. I made sure not to hit his boots, but I hoped my intentions were clear. The younger guard blanched, and I felt a degree of satisfaction in knowing I concerned him. I scrambled to the door as soon as it came open, and though I felt my cell mate’s eyes burning holes into my neck, I didn’t look back.

Once I stepped through the door and heard it clang shut behind me, it drove the nail further into the coffin of my old life. Prison breaks a criminal, sure enough, but like I said - it can also make ‘em. I’d been doing plenty of thinking during my time in county jail, and all of those eighteen months of thinking culminated in two little words.

Next time.

Next time, I wouldn’t be so tactless.

Next time, I wouldn’t steal a horse with a brand.

Next time, I wouldn’t let my heart rule my head.

My thoughts were built up of ‘next time’s, filling it brick by brick with ideas and schemes til there was a wall built in my mind between that government line. What was right and what was easy? I’d tried doing what was right and it hadn’t helped me out none – now was the time to try something different.

The older jailor put the chains on me. I flexed my wrists in them, testing their strength even as I knew there was no need for it. When I glanced at him, suddenly not so sure of this thing he called freedom, I saw no feeling in his face. He just jerked his head towards the long hallway and barked, “Get yourself moving, Kirschtein.”

So I did. Walking down that hallway, with my chains rattling like the breaths of the inmates as they watched me, was not the triumphant march I’d been wanting. The men in the other cells crowded to look at me, pressing themselves against the bars of their cages and shouting out the name I’d been granted in the clamouring din.

“So long, Colt! Been a _real_ pleasure.”

“See you on the outside Colt, if I ain’t swinging by November.”

“You better start running, Colt, else I’ll be after you when I get out!”

I took it all and let it crash against me, an immovable rock on the edge of a choppy shoreline. The kid who’d been thrown in the county jail was as good as dead now. I let no fear take me, no misgivings or anger or downright disgust at the other inmates. I just felt nothing.

The younger of the pair couldn’t help himself. Guess he was the curious type – some of them were. “Why do they call you Colt?”

I gave him a sharp glance out the corner of my eye. He weren’t no seasoned jailor, that was for sure. He was probably the same age as my youngest brother, all self-importance and pomp. A feeling rose to the surface but I pushed it back down again rather firmly.

“The revolver I stole,” I answered. “That was what it was, a Colt.”

“Funny,” said the older guard, “That ain’t what I heard.” I kept my head down and said nothing more. Half truth it may have been, but they didn’t have no hope in hell of me talking. If I’d had my way, I weren’t ever gonna be talking about it.

What I do recall, sharper than yesterday, was when we passed a cell with a single man standing in it. There was no signs of life, and when the old guard stopped to bang on the door, I looked through the bars at the hateful man inside. He stirred at the noise and stared at me with his mean, sharp eyes. A cold look from me sent him back into the corner of his cell, spitting to the floor and cursing my name.

I could feel the young guard’s question before it even came out his mouth. “Who’s that man?”

“Lenny, quit it,” the old guard growled. “Ain’t no need in askin’ these bastards their life stories. Ain’t gonna get nothing but lies.”

“It’s alright,” I said after a beat, surprising the both of them. “The boy can ask.” I stared at him, noticing the way he tried to lean out my way. “You wanna know why that fella ain’t looking at me?”

The guard, Lenny, swallowed so painful his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat like a cork. “Say I am.”

“Say you were,” I agreed. “Well, Lenny, he made a pass at me when I’d not been here long. Happens a lot, when the men are lonesome and the nights are long. Tried to force himself on me, the way men think they can to women and boys who don’t want nothing to do with ‘em.”

Poor Lenny had gone whiter than the snow on the mountains. “That ain’t true.”

“Suit yourself if you don’t believe it, but you asked so I’m tellin’.” The older guard gave me a shove to start moving again, so move I did. “That’s what he tried to do.”

“So, what did you do? When he… he tried to-”

“I bit off his earlobe,” I replied coolly. “Spat it on the floor in front of him. He don’t go near no one now.”

Because that was the man I was, how the forge had moulded me. I weren’t the kind that settled for fools, or folk who thought they could take something from me that I weren’t willing to give. Needless to say, the rest of the walk was pretty quiet and pretty quick.

I left the Sundance jail with my head held high as I could muster, a free man with a record of horse stealing to his name. I had nothing more than the clothes on my back and a drought in my blood, and I knew precisely where to quench that thirst.

Sundance was a bustling little town, the way all mining and frontier camps went once the city folk started poking their noses in. There was plenty of saloons, brothels and other places of ill repute that’d curl the hair on your Mama’s chest – plenty to choose from for a man starved of good food, drink and pleasurable company for too long. But I had only one place in mind.

I made for the Amber Rose, an upmarket bordello I’d come to know well during my time on the run. It was the only place in the whole of Sundance that didn’t look tired. It was a small place, wedged in between the saloon and a butcher’s, and as I stumbled through its doors I expected to be hailed as a conquering hero. That weren’t to happen, sadly.

The moment I shouldered my way into the fine establishment, an eerie silence fell. It was like a famed gunslinger or murderer or the like had just strolled in. I took in some memorable faces, some girls I recognised from my nights spent in that place before the jailing, but they didn’t look at me. They kept their eyes down, or fixed on the bar, or anywhere that weren’t on me. I realised, with a jolt of horror, that they was afraid. They was afraid of _me_. They knew as well as anyone the tales of good men gone mad in the clutches of the law if they weren’t hanged first, and they was likely to be wonderin’ if I was one of those men. It hurt to be seen as someone to be feared. It’s a feeling I ain’t never been a fan of.

I cleared my throat, and glanced at the where the Madame herself was stood at the bar, watching me like a vulture. “How’s about a drink then, Rico? Or have you lost your Southern hospitality?”

I saw the corners of her mouth turn up a little, and relief settled over me. “Hannah!” she called out. “Get the whiskey. The expensive kind.”

One of the girls plucked herself free of her patron, who adjusted himself and complained, “Why don’t you ever git us the good whiskey, Ms Brzenska?”

“Shut it, Tanner. You wouldn’t no good whiskey if it died in your bed,” she answered.

“Would if you served it,” Tanner muttered under his breath.

Rico, to my amusement, ignored him. “So it’s true,” she stated as I pulled up a seat. “You’re outta jail.”

“Pardoned,” I said, gazing longingly at the bottles Hannah was rifling through behind Rico’s head. “Someone up there likes me. First for everything.”

She snorted at that, and turned to snatch the bottle from her girl’s grasp. Rico Brzenska was a woman of her own making, and she knew it. Small, ash blonde and wispy, she reminded me of Samanna sometimes by the way she spoke and the way she glared, but there was a definite edge to her that Samanna would’ve never had. “Don’t ever believe in fate, son. If you do that, you’re lost for good.”

The Rose seemed to breathe again, like a relieved dog. The whiskey was poured, and Rico and I took to it as fish as the room erupted into noise and music once again. The burn was welcome, and raged a fire in my belly. “This is good whiskey,” I noted, impressed. “Not watered down a bit. You must’ve missed me.”

Rico’s smile was toothy as a lizard. “No use wasting good whiskey on the likes of Tanner over there – he’s too drunk to know the difference, it’s almost too easy cheatin’ him outta his money.” I snorted, and took another drink. “The girls missed you,” she said, setting down another as soon as I finished. “Always asking when you were next coming ‘round. You must be quite the conversationalist.”

I drew the glass towards me, my throat already burning in anticipation for more. “Guess I got more talents than stealing horses and getting caught.”

Rico patted me on the shoulder and smiled a touch more meaningful. “It’s good to see you out of there, boy. You got the lot of us worried.”

I never thought I’d make a friend of a Madam, especially for not giving her business. Though I frequented the Rose’s bar often, and paid for my whiskey like any good man, I paid for nothing else nor wanted to. Truth was, Rico and the girls liked me cus I never wanted anything from ‘em; I just spoke to ‘em like they was people and not pieces of flesh to be touched and ogled at without permission. I weren’t sure back then why the thought of laying with a woman didn’t interest me none; the fancy had just never taken me. I liked the women – I was, after all, only human – but looking was different to touching.

“Those clothes don’t fit you proper no more,” Rico added. “And you need that hair and beard seen to. Good God, boy, I barely recognised you before you opened that fancy talkin’ gob o’ yours.”

She was right. The clothes I’d gone into Sundance wearing were both too short and too big for me, though my shoulders had grown considerably from the months of hard labour I’d been subjected to. And my beard? Of course. That had explained the cold reception. Jails ain’t exactly no barber shops, and I’d been clean shaved when I’d visited last.

“Ain’t got no money for all that,” I shrugged. “Got nothing – not even that horse.”

“That horse wasn’t yours to have,” Rico pointed out mildly. “He was a handsome looking thing, that much is true, but he was hot. Can’t keep a horse that’s hot out here, someone’s bound to notice.”

“Learnt that the hard way,” I muttered.

“But that gun of yours is still here. Got it upstairs for safety, so’s the law didn’t find it.” She winked. “Don’t know who’s out robbin’ these days.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. I took another gulp of whiskey.

“You could pawn it, probably. I know a fella who’d give you a decent price, no questions asked.”

I scoffed. “You kiddin’? That gun got me jailed. For that, it’s priceless. I ain’t selling, no matter what.”

Rico shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you got no money and you wanna stay here, you’ll have to work the nights for your room.” When I looked a mite sharp, she added quickly, “to protect my girls, is all. My, your face… you been in that business before, have you?”

I didn’t answer. I figured it was better not to. I just drank, ignoring the twist to my gut as I thought of it. One of the girls had started up playing the piano in the corner of the bordello, but she was out of practice as the keys jarred together like teeth at a bit.

The girls had returned to their clients entirely now, but I was still looking. There was someone I was looking for who wasn’t Rico, a someone I’d been waiting on since I got into jail. I searched for a headstrong glare, a confident sway to a walk and a laugh that rippled across the room like water. But I saw no one matching that description. Damnit, where was she?

Rico cleared her throat. “Mina’s gone, Jean.”

I looked to her immediately. “What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean gone. She don’t work here no more. Ain’t even in Wyoming.”

Something felt crushed in my chest. I’d hoped, soft as I was, that she would wait for me as I waited for her. Mina, a girl with hair black as a raven’s wing and a wit as sharp as the slaps she dealt unruly punters, I’d been taken with her the moment I saw her. I’d thought, foolishly, that the feeling was mutual. “What happened?” I caught myself asking.

“Shacked up with some cowpoke in Montana,” Rico answered. “He was a widow, didn’t mind none that she was… well, that she was of _this_ profession. Paid a better dowry than her Pap did when he sold her to me, I’ll tell you that.” She had the good grace to look sympathetic, as my heart was breaking in front of her. “I’m sorry, son. Know you were soft on her.”

“I was gonna marry her,” I said, the bitterness coiling in my gut like a rattler. “When the time came. She said she would. We was going to Colorado, to be near my cousin.”

“Colorado, Montana. All the same in the end. Look, Jean, she liked you. She liked you more’n I think she realised. But she weren’t in the business of waiting around for a criminal. Even if that criminal is you.”

The words stung, but they were just wounds upon already bleeding flesh. I threw the rest of the whiskey down my throat and pushed back from the bar. “Let me borrow your horse, wouldja?”

Rico raised a brow. “And why would I go and do a thing like that?”

“Because you missed me.”

“Ain’t gonna steal it now, are you? Got yourself a reputation.”

“Don’t worry. I only steal from folk I don’t like.”

She frowned, still suspicious. “What you want her for?”

I turned back to the room; to the people, the noise, the clamour. It was freedom, sure, but if I didn’t know no better, I could close my eyes and be back in jail. “Need to get outta town for a little bit,” I said.

Rico seemed to understand, for she let me take her horse without another word. Once I was in the saddle I drove my heels into the mare’s flanks and galloped clear of the main street, down the dust road and past the views I’d been staring out at for so long behind bars. Rico’s mare was long-legged and cranky, but I set her right with a click of tongue and a nudge to her sides. I galloped her outta Sundance with a hoarse shout, kicking up orange clouds in our wake. I might have narrowly missed hitting the schoolmistress crossing the road, or almost knocked into a goods wagon laden with cans of fruit and fish, but their anger and their shrieks trailed on behind me like the tail of my mount and were soon lost to me.

Freedom hadn’t felt real until I could see the endless reach of sky that the town hid from view.  There was nothing but the thin line of a horizon to remind me there was a limit to how far I could go, how fast I could push the mare. The creak of the saddle leather, the thunderous rolling of hooves and the furious, flying pace – it all felt like home. That was the freedom for me, right there.

I stopped the mare on the top of a rolling hill. Standing in the shadow of the great mountain that gave the town its name and loomed over it like a watchful parent, I felt small and a mite unimportant. But it lightened my mood, and took away the weight that had been resting so heavy on my chest for so long. The mare was spent, her head drooping and nostrils flaring. I let her get her breath, and it was when I was looking about the place that I spotted a band of horses down the slope of the hill.

It weren’t unusual to see wild horses around those parts; back then they were everywhere, eking out a living where they could like the rest of us. It was a sizeable group, comprised of mares and their young, and all of ‘em fat from the good spring. Their stallion, who stood a little ways off gazing into the distance, was spotted all over. He was a big Mustang, easily as tall as the stallion I’d stolen from Oluo, and as I stood on that hill he turned to look at me. There was an intelligence in those eyes, a knowing almost, and I was struck by the feeling. It was like he knew me, had seen what had happened to me and was sorry for it.

We watched one another for a moment, he an animal and I a man, until he lowered his head to the ground and blew through his nose. Then, he whinnied to his herd and the group began to move, the youngsters following behind like lambs.

It was a strange moment, one that would have passed me by if it weren’t for how it made me _feel._ I hadn’t stopped to think about that since I’d got out of jail. I had sealed away that part of me, the part that felt pain and fear and loss, because it made me safe. It kept me sane. But as the stallion and his band moved off, I felt it break loose and consume me so fast I almost fell outta the saddle. I dismounted on shaking legs, running a hand through the mare’s mane as she leant into the attention. I buried my face in her neck, and I cried.

I cried with joy, for being free. I cried with fear, from what I’d seen and done in that godforsaken jail. And I cried for Mina, who couldn’t wait for someone like me.

I knew in that moment that no matter what happened, no matter how many ‘next time’s I plotted, that I would rather die than go back into that jail – or any jail, for that matter. To this day, I have not stepped foot in a jail since Sundance, and I don’t ever plan to.

* * *

The folks who hunted me all them years later, and the boys who wrote in the papers about me, called this time of my life a ‘quiet’ time, a time where I weren’t going around terrorising towns and shooting up banks. I guess this was true, sorta. Despite that cold resolve to do better the next time I went breaking any laws, I was trying my best to go straight. I wanted so much to be done with trouble, with the law, and to set up an honest life for myself.

Even now, I feel I would have died a happy man if I’d done it. I would’a took jobs where I could and got by on the good grace of other folk when I couldn’t. Might have even got myself a homestead of my own, raised a few horses and cattle. I would’a been just fine, if it weren’t for Marco Bodt’s goddamned words buzzing round my head like horseflies. They undid me, them words, told me that the jobs I took weren’t worth my salt.

It meant I moved on quickly, too quick to make friends or keep ‘em, and it became a somewhat lonely existence I cut. I came back to Sundance when I could to check in with Rico and the girls, but the visits never lasted too long and I got an itch by the second week. I suppose the jail had kept me in the same place for so long that the inclination was shook plain outta me. I just wanted to keep moving, keep working, and figured that somewhere along the line, it would stick.

On another of my trips to Sundance a year later, I was in a poor state again. The summer had been hard, my horse had come up lame during a cattle drive and now the winter was soon to be arriving. I had a long few months of getting by to look forward to.

“Well, look who it is,” Rico crowed as I shouldered my way into the Rose, “the conquering hero.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I shed my rain-sodden coat and left it on the rack by the door. “You missed me.”

“Like a hole in the head, sugar. What can I get you, whiskey?”

“Please.” I walked to the bar, leaving a trail of water in my wake. “Somethin’ to warm my bones wouldn’t go down badly neither.”

Rico gave me a shrewd look. “If you ain’t talking about company, which I’m expectin’ you’re not, how about some stew? Marie-Ann made it, so I’d be careful. Might choke you.”

I smiled at the affronted expression on the girl’s face and pulled up a chair. “So long as it’s hot, you can feed me nightshade.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Rico threw a cleaning cloth at me, and I caught it nimbly between my fingers. “Make yourself useful, why don’tcha?”

Whilst she was getting a bowl ready, I heard the tell-tale steps of a satisfied customer descending the stairs and I made myself busy wiping down the bar. I didn’t know why bumping into patrons made something in me stutter shut. Guess it could’a been the shyness of never having experienced it myself. But there was something else. The thought of the girls I laughed with, drank with and were friends of having to lie with men that paid for it… call me a snob or a prude all you like, but I weren’t in the market for a thing like that. So I kept my head down and kept trying to fade into the woodwork, ‘til the footsteps stopped.

“Jean Kirschtein?”

My ears pricked up. When I turned, my hackles up, I saw the familiar face of Thomas Wagner with his arm slung around Hannah’s shoulder. He had something of a beard now, and his hair was a mite longer, but it was him. He was older, ‘course he was, but then again so was I.

“Christ alive,” I swore.

He laughed. “I don’t look that bad, do I?”

“Oh, no, not at all, I just…” I frowned. “It’s been a long time.”

“Couple of years,” he agreed with a nod. “See you’ve been busy chasing that sunset of yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“I read about you in the paper. ‘Bout the horse thievin’ and the escapin’ and whatnot.”

I lowered my gaze to the bar. “Oh.”

“But I guess the Colt of Sundance has run his last race.” He gestured to the rag in my hand.

I threw it down on the bar with a grunt, still prickling uncomfortably at the name on Thomas’s tongue. “Oh, hush your mouth. S’quiet right now. You know that. Once it gets to winter…”

“…the cowpokes go indoors,” he finished with another sage nod. “So, still wrangling cattle, are you?”

Against my better judgement, I bought my old friend a whiskey (despite Rico’s piercing stare) and got myself comfy at a table. Once I answered a few of his questions about my time in jail and how I came to be there, Thomas turned out to be quite the talker. His story weren’t an uncommon one; hell, I shared a load of it myself. He’d stuck around Pixis’ place until the old man sold up and moved out to someplace out east. The Blizzard killed off a hundred cattle, and both Thomas and a number of other ranch hands I’d been friendly with was laid off by the new owner.

As Thomas nursed his whiskey, he explained that they’d struck it out together for a time, but eventually the seasons ticked by and some boys went home. Others settled in towns, became homesteaders. Even more became guides to help those moving in the last staggering wagon trains from Oregon to California.

“I weren’t for all that, you understand,” he said to me, swirling his drink around the glass. “Samuel and I, we wanted to start out a place all our own. Get a few hands, a couple o’ pigs and sheep and see where it took us. Have our wives talk together on the porch in the evenin’, and the little ones playin’ together with the geese and chickens.” He gave a slightly bitter laugh. “No chance of that working out. Ain’t no one here wants to pay a good price for a pig they can’t raise ‘emselves, and sheep are dull as rocks. They die too easy.”  

“So what are you doing now?”

Thomas shrugged, finally draining the last of the whiskey. “Nothin’, that’s what. Not now the weather’s rolling in.” Something in his expression made me wanna ask something more. He seemed to know it too, for he gave a dry smile and set his glass back down on the table. “Got somethin’ planned, though. Been thinking ‘bout it for some time.”

I’m ashamed to say that it piqued my interest. So help me, that itch o’ mine was back something fierce, and I wanted so much to scratch it. “What kind of something?” I caught myself asking.

Thomas motioned to the bar. “Get me another drink, Colt, and I’ll tell you.”

When I returned with our glasses full and Rico’s gaze burning into my back, Thomas’s smile turned to a smirk. He took the drink like a man just come in from a desert, and after a sip he asked, “You in the market for something other than breaking horses or chasing cattle?”

“What you got in mind?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I sighed. “Damnit Thomas, tell me. I ain’t no snitch – if I ain’t doin’ it I won’t be tellin’ on you to the law.”

When Thomas looked at me again, his eyes were full of a slyness that came birthed from desperation. “How you feel about robbing a train?”

Now, let it be said that I knew how dumb an idea it was to go rob us a train. During my time in jail I’d met a good few men who had tried and failed. Trains had to be robbed at the right time, they had to have the right sorts of people in them – and most of all, trains needed to be stopped so’s you could get the job done.

I laughed it off and told Thomas not to be so dumb. He laughed too, said it was just an idea, and that was that. But it was a dangerous thought, one I tried to push to the back of my mind. It sprouted a germ of an idea, one that belonged in the pages of my childhood books. It made me think back to the James boys in those pages; how they would storm the carriages, demand the jewellery off rich ladies’ ears and the money in the men’s pockets, and ride off with small fortunes to split between ‘em all. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, the thought was a tempting one indeed. After all, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had money about me that weren’t going on a warm meal or a roof over my head.

I took to meeting Thomas pretty regular in one of the saloons off the main street. It was cheaper than the Rose and had less agreeable company, but we got by okay. Thomas often brought Samuel along with him, who I was happy to be see again, but sometimes other cowboys joined us, boys Thomas had met on his own trails and adventures. It was clear all of ‘em were dissatisfied with the past season, and were angry at how we’d had to scratch out a livin’ on nothing.

“It’s a goddamn liberty,” one of them snarled under his breath. “The big bosses know we ain’t got nowhere else to go, and that there’s too many of us to say no to a job. They take whoever’s willing to work for the lowest price and get ‘em shovelling shit all day.”

A murmur of agreement rose from the table. I did nothing, just sat and listened. I was good at that. Since I’d got back to working, it seemed as though I’d been gone for decades, cut adrift in the world and only just arrived back like some kinda Robinson Crusoe. The world, they say, was changing, and since the Blizzard the cattle numbers were taking their time to pick back up. Not enough cows meant not enough work, and not enough work meant…

Well. Getting undercut by your own.

We were all angry, in them days. And anger makes men do stupid things.

“I dunno, boys,” Thomas said with a laboured sigh, breaking through my thoughts. “I say we just rob us a train right here and now. Get it over with.”

“Let’s do it.”

All eyes fell on me across the table. Even Thomas’s playful smirk vanished.

“What you say there, Jean?” Samuel asked, setting down his bottle more careful’n normal.

“Let’s do it,” I repeated, strength filling me the more I said it. “Let’s rob us a goddamn train.”

Thomas and Samuel eyed each other across the table, a sorta nervous knowin’ feeling starting to light ‘em up. A few of the boys chuckled, but it were a feeble breed of noise and died quick. “Jean-” Thomas began, but I cut him off by leaning over the table.

“No, Thomas, listen. I’ve had enough of living against my skin. I get looked like like a piece o’ dirt every time I come riding into this town. I been laid off so many times this year I think I been out of work longer than been in it. So I’ve had it. I’ve…” I faltered here, hating myself for what I was about to say but not being able to stop myself. “I’ve just about had it with being the Greenhorn from Nowhere, Pennsylvania who’s gonna die in the dirt. So.” I stared right at Thomas, even as he shrank away. “Let’s rob us a train.”

After my outburst, there was a long silence. Thomas broke it with a low, wheedling whistle and sagged into his chair. Samuel looked – I liked to think – a mite impressed. “Well,” he said, “you sure got a way with words, Jean. When you do talk.”

I coloured. “We doing this or what?”

Another glance was shared between him and Samuel, something definitive, before Thomas let out a sigh. “Well, if that ain’t convinced us to let you in on this, then nothing will.”

I frowned. “Convinced?”

Turned out they was planning it all along, the swine – no jokes to be seen. They wanted themselves a runner, someone for the horses and since I had a particular talent for the beasts, they had wanted me. I’d played right into their hands, and I cursed myself for not seein’ the trap. Still, I was a part of it now and a part of it I would stay. They filled me in on the details.

The target was a passenger train that wound its way from Wyoming all the way to California, laden with the rich and the stupid. Most important though was their luggage, packed away in its own carriage with nothing stopping a group of men walking in but a single guard. Thinking on it now, the plan was a simple one; Marco would likely call it ‘too simple’.

We was to split off in the evening. I was to ride out of Sundance with the horses a mile or so, following the tracks until I found a spot where I thought it deserted and quiet. Then I was to mess with the tracks. “Nothing fancy,” Thomas instructed me. “See if you can get a tree cut down, or set a fire. Just anything that would make a train stop.” Thomas, Samuel and the others would’a snuck onto the train and rode it up to where I would have it stop. They’d make sure the train stopped, loot the luggage car and we would get the hell outta there.

Simple. Too simple.

We were likely drunk when we thought this sorry excuse of a plan up – I’m certain I was, at least. Before I knew it, I was mounting up at an unholy time of night a day or two later with a bunch of nervous horses tied to my saddle. I ain’t too man to admit that I drank that night too; a lack of morale makes bravery for us all, but that bravado fled from me like a wayward mistress once I rode out of that town, tailing the tracks as careful as I could. The whiskey kept fuellin’ that fire in me. Thomas and Samuel, I knew, was already in position. They was counting on me. There weren’t no backing out, not now – if I did it would be the end of them.

I rode hard to the spot I’d decided on, a straight length of track with no chance of another train happenin’ upon us without warning, nor any travellers sticking their noses into what don’t concern ‘em. My gelding was flecked with foam and snorting tiredly when I pulled him up, and the others fared no better. I rubbed ‘em down as best I could and tethered them nearby with space to graze before I got to work.

There was no trees around for miles, so the bonfire would have to do. Despite the chill, the winter had been dry so far, so the grasses and brush were easy to catch alight and keep burning. I took a bottle of whiskey out my pocket as I watched the flames spring to life on the tracks, taking a heavy swig to settle my bones as well as warm em’ up a little. About a half hour later, my courage was back and the bottle almost empty. Now I don’t go about drinkin’ often, but like I said – I needed the courage. But the drink don’t just make you brave; it also makes you dumb as a cow.

That has to be the only reason why I poured the rest of the whiskey onto the fire.

It roared like a lion, leaping into the air and scorching the wind as the horses neighed in terror and fought against the reins binding them to one spot. I staggered back, taken by the sight of the flames and the thrill of terror that stirred in my heart – and then I saw the light.

The train was on its way.

It was a pinprick in the dark to start, a small and delicate thing that could be snubbed out if you pressed a thumb to it. But that light began to grow and become brighter, more solid and real, and there was no mistaking it then.

The train was on its way.

I went to the horses and quietened them ( _the train was on its way)_ for their eyes were still showing their whites and their flesh still jumped from the shock of the fire. I ran my hand down my gelding’s legs to check he was sound. He was, I knew, but it gave me a thing to do. I’d won him in a poker game last Spring; he’d been a hellion then, still was a little now, but he and I had come to a sorta understanding that I wouldn’t jab him in the sides so much if he didn’t try to throw me. He’d come with the name of Chase, and I was too lazy to rename him. Besides, it was meant to be unlucky.

The train was slowing. I could hear the screech of its brakes as it saw the fire. I didn’t look at it though – looking at it made it real, an’ I wanted to keep this as unreal as possible. What I did do was pull my bandana up over my face and slip my stolen Colt out of its holster. It seemed fitting to bring it along, though I weren’t keen on using it.

I turned when I heard the shouts. The train, a giant behemoth that was belching out smoke like a chimney, was stopped. The shouts came from the passengers, confused as to why their journey had come to such an abrupt halt. I brought the Colt out level and shouted, “Any men in there?”

A figure stumbled out of the engine car with his hands up and another followed with a steadier, more confident stride to them. I didn’t recognise the second figure as being Thomas until he shouted back, “Damn Roberts skipped out on us!”

I lowered my gun. The man Thomas had led off the train looked like the engineer, pale and shaky with shock, and I knew he’d give us no trouble. “Roberts?” I repeated. Shit, I’d known that boy wasn’t to be trusted. He hadn’t been in the line of business as long as we had, didn’t have as much of a score to settle. I cursed under my breath. “What does that mean?”

“That you got to get on the goddamn train, you numbskull!” Thomas roared in reply.

Well, that stopped me in my tracks. That weren’t never part of the plan; I was the runner, I dealt with the horses, I weren’t involved in the thievin’ in any way. But as all great plans go, this one went stray. And so I holstered my gun and strode past the engineer, who flinched as I came. “You owe me for this,” I said between gritted teeth. I couldn’t tell the expression Thomas was hiding underneath his scarf, but I imagine it was one of great amusement.

So I got on the train, ignoring the confused shouts and cries of the passengers further down the way. It was a nice one, one that I wouldn’t be riding in my wildest daydreams. I whistled through my teeth at how money seemed to drip from the very ceiling of the carriage I was stood in – and it weren’t even for the passengers. Seems like luggage needed a mighty comfortable ride too.

A dark-haired man looked up sharpish when I entered, but we relaxed when we recognised each other. Samuel had found a safe, which he seemed to think was what we had to focus on since he was ignoring everything else in the car.

“What’s happening out there?” he hissed.

“Thomas has the engineer.” I joined him by the safe, looking it over with a degree of excitement. “What you got there?”

“Well I don’t rightly know, not yet, but I reckon it’s gonna be big,” Samuel replied, not looking over his shoulder as he started to turn the dials. “We should loot the carriages. Bet the passengers have loads on ‘em.”

“No.” I glowered at him. “That ain’t part of the plan. I ain’t taking nothing from decent folk.”

“They ain’t surely all decent folk.”

My glare made Samuel roll his eyes and turn back to his work. “It’s a heavy safe. Gotta have a heavy load.”

I left him to it and rifled through some of the luggage nearby. The first one I tried was locked. I cursed and tried another. It opened – but there was nothing but clothes and a couple of knick knacks. A cold sweat started through me as I began opening anything, everything, and finding nothing valuable. I found a few dollars here and there, shoved into socks or pockets of the suitcases, but there weren’t nothing much, nothing that was worth selling on neither. I was just about to turn to Samuel to see how he was getting on when-

“You! Stop, right there!”

Samuel froze up like a fox caught in a hen coop. Instinct told me to pull my gun. When I spun around, the Colt half-cocked and ready to fire, I came face to face with a young man in the uniform of the railway company. He was only a boy, barely old enough to shave, but he was glaring at us with all the hatred of the world.

He paled at the sight of my revolver, and backed away with his hands thrown up. “Y-you ain’t supposed to be here,” he said, his bravery failing the longer he looked at me. “I-if you get down off this train right now I won’t get the marshals involved.”

I had to admit, the thought of the marshals did quell my already waning enthusiasm. If I got caught again, there weren’t no getting out. I was going to jail, and for a long time – and that thought made me falter.

“Just get him to open this safe or shoot him, for Christ’s sake!” Samuel shouted at me.

I blinked. “And why am I gonna go shooting him for?”

“Just do it!”

The youth turned the colour of soured milk. “Uh, you shouldn’t go doing that, friend. Robbing a train is one thing, but killing someo-”

A shot rang out from outside the train that made us all jump. The only thing I could think of was that Thomas had got nervous. The engineer could have made a run for it, or tried to take a step that Thomas weren’t happy with. I felt sick, chilled to the core with the thought of the innocent lying on the dusty ground a few feet away.

I turned back to the boy cold as iron. I couldn’t let it show. Couldn’t let this kid know I was scared. Because I was damn well scared.

“I reckon,” I said, steadying myself, “that…that killin’ someone ain’t something we care too much about,  _friend._ ”

The boy looked close to fainting.

I pointed the Colt at him and we moved closer to the safe. “You know how to open that thing?”

The boy hesitated. “No.”

I faltered. “Uh.” A pause. “Yes, you do.”

He said nothing.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Edward,” he answered, after another long pause.

“Well,  _Edward,_ you’re mighty young to be up here by yourself. What you doing?”

I was stalling for time. Samuel seemed to know it, for he went right back to breaking the lock. In truth I was thinking back to my time with the stallion in the corral, a time that felt like lifetimes ago. I thought of the man who knelt near the thrashing head and told me to talk. Just talk. It helped. And so, I did.

The boy relaxed a mite too, for he answered, “This is my first job, sir. Uncle put in a good word with the company, said I was a boy to be trusted.”

“You certainly are that,” I nodded. “Have to be a good kid, to stand up to the likes of us.”

The boy squared his shoulders. “Oh, you’re nothin’. Just some hoodlums that think you can rob a train and get away with it.”

I angled the gun back on him, chuckling despite myself. “Careful now, son. Remember who has the gun.”

The boy obediently shut up. I continued, “I have a suggestion. How about we shoot the breeze a little, hmm?” I levelled the gun at his head, and a whimper escaped him. “See, I reckon you’re clever, Edward. I reckon you know plenty about this train and the people on it. I also reckon you could bust open that safe easy as pie if the fancy took you.” I pressed the gun muzzle to his head now, and felt him jump at how cold it was against his sweating skin. “So I think you’ll do this for us, and we’ll be on our way.”

Edward shut his eyes. Wheezed out a few pathetic, weakening breaths. Then he opened his eyes again and stared right at me. “You’ll have to kill me.”

I blinked. Well, this was something new. Threats were never my strong suit, but I figured I was getting better. But here this boy was, his whole life ahead of him, willing to die for his job – and a terrible job at that. I clicked the safety off the gun, and watched him twitch against it. “Excuse me?”

“No.”

“You open the safe, or you die. Simple as that.”

Another defiant glare. “Well then, mister, I suppose I’ve got to die.”

Now I could have shot that boy, or beaten him senseless until he begged for mercy and told me what I needed to know. But something stumped me. Maybe I saw a part of me in him, a part that just wanted to do good by my employer and didn’t want no trouble. No matter what, though, it made me lower my gun.

“Goddamnit!”

Samuel had given up and started rifling through the sacks of mail left by the safe. My remaining shreds of bravery began to wither and die in my chest, the drink from before doing nothing to stave off the bite. “We gotta move!” I warned. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been in the car, but it had been long enough. We needed to get outta there.

“I found something!” Samuel cried.

“How much?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the boy.

The pause didn’t give me much hope. “Twenty dollars.”

I swore, backing the boy into a corner with the flick of my gun and instructing him in no uncertain circumstances was he to run, before turning back to the luggage. “There’s gotta be something that’s worth more than twenty dollars in here.”

That was when I heard the second gunshot, and rapid footsteps making their way towards us. Thomas’s head came through the car door – and his eyes were wide as dinner plates. “We gotta go.”

Samuel shouldered his way over. “What? Why?”

Thomas’s gaze, wild-eyed and worried, said it all. “Law.”

A chill ran through me. “Told you it was time to go,” I said to Samuel, who threw up his hands in annoyance. “Forget the money. We gotta go before they catch us up.”

“They’re already pretty close,” Thomas said. “I reckon it won’t take long. They got fast horses.”

That was enough for me. I slipped out of the train with a curse and a pocket of nothing more than a month’s cowboying wage, and didn’t look back. Samuel followed behind me with a grunt, and we all set off towards the waiting horses. There weren’t no body we had to walk past, so it seemed the engineer had kept his life after all. I didn’t stop to ask Thomas where he was.

We started running when the shots started. They sounded like sharp claps of thunder, they was so far away, but then we saw the shadows in the distance of the train’s light gaining legs. There looked like a lot of ‘em, too, all riding abreast like a battle charge. The sight made me tremble – just a bit.

The shots they were firing were frightening our horses something terrible. I supposed that’s what they was trying to do in the first place. The horses spooked and jostled against one another, their heads up and ears pinned, but I rushed in amongst them to tie ‘em loose. We lost Roberts’ horse, the damn brute galloping off in the opposite direction, but I managed to swing onto Chase’s back without being thrown about too much. I had to stay calm. The law didn’t have us yet. We had us a head start. That was sometimes all we needed.

I turned to Thomas and Samuel as they mounted up and caught Thomas’s eye. I saw it then, a sliver of hollow fear hiding in his eyes, and I tried not to let it get to me that someone aside from me was scared too. “We gotta split up,” Thomas said, trying his best to sit to his horse’s rear. “We’ll meet back someplace safe, somewhere out of sight, but we keep our heads down ‘til this blows over.”

I nodded, then heard hooves to the right. A trio of horses came into sight over the head of a hill – and among them, a man with a silver star pinned to his chest. It was glinting in the glare of the train’s lights, and so was the gun he had levelled with us.

“Scatter!” Thomas ordered, and with a shout he wheeled his horse away. I fired my gun into the air, a warning shot that also caused Chase to bolt, and then the chase was on.

The horses broke away from one another like flocking birds, and from then on I ain’t too proud to admit that I didn’t waste another thought on the others. All I worried about was getting away from the men gaining on my tail. I had a bundle of dollars in my saddlebags that really weren’t worth the trouble, but there was no way in hell I was getting myself caught.

I chanced a look over my shoulder and saw that the men had broken off too. The man with the silver star wasn’t chasing me; instead, it was some scrawny looking man on an equally skinny bay that flew over the ground so quick he scarcely touched it. I fired over my shoulder, more to keep him away than to hit him, and urged Chase faster. He was a Quarter, Chase, the kind of horse that runs like the devil for a quarter mile but starts to tire after that. Once I had my quarter, I knew it would be over.

It was a bad run. The ground weren’t good and I pushed my horse too hard. Every time I heard the hoofbeats get nearer or the encouraging shouts of my tormentor, I dove my spurs into his flanks so sharp his blood speckled the thirsting ground. Chase was blowing heavy through his nose, sweat dampening his coat so it gleamed under the moonlight. The man chasing me began to shoot, the bullets flying into the ground near Chase’s hooves. He was trying to cripple the horse, get him to stumble or make some sort of mistake. It was a dirty trick, but there weren’t no place for rules in a race like this.

We was starting to run into coarse brush and sage, and I thought I might be able to dislodge my pursuer, when another rider appeared in the corner of my vision and raised a pistol. The resounding shot missed me, but that wasn’t what it was aimed at. With a shriek, Chase seemed to hang suspended mid-gallop for only a moment before he collapsed into the deepest part of the sage with a groan. I had the sense to throw myself clear, landing heavy a few feet from him. Though I got the winds knocked out of me, I willed my limbs to get working and managed to crawl into thicker brush. In the confusion the moonlight made of us, the riders couldn’t be sure where I’d fallen – that’s what I hoped, anyway.

It was the longest few minutes of my life, laying there waiting for the men to find me. I’d read enough stories to know what would happen if they did. It involved rope, and swinging, and I weren’t in that sort of game. So I kept still and silent as death, listening to the men talk as they searched me out. Their horses wouldn’t get too close, frightened by the sound of Chase squealing like a stuck pig and the smell of his blood, and for that I thanked him. The poor beast was of use to me even as he was dying.

“I don’t see him!” one of the men called out.

“Well he has to be here! He didn’t vanish into thin air!”

“I _know_ that, but can you see him? He’s gone!”

“Might’ve broken his neck from that fall.” A boot appeared in my view, next to Chase’s flaring nostrils. It nudged him with little interest, and he gave another shriek. “Damn thing went down like a sack of potatoes. Dunno if I’d live to walk away from that.”

“But we got no body!” the other whined. “No body means no reward!”

“We wouldn’t have gotten much. He weren’t the brains, you could tell that. He was just some sucker along for the ride.” The boot turned a little. The rider was now looking at Chase, who had stopped his noises and now had blood seeping from his nose. “Even if he’s alive, he ain’t getting far. His nag’s done for.” The boot nudged Chase’s nose again.

“Better make sure.”

The next gunshot made me bite down on my hand to stop myself from calling out. With a jerk, Chase moved no more.

It didn’t take the riders long to leave after that. Guess they weren’t in the mood to be looking around a sage field in the middle of the night, and maybe I weren’t that important in the long run. I wonder sometimes if I’d been found that night, hiding like a rabbit from a hunter’s gun. It makes me shudder to imagine what I coulda missed out on, and how much of my soul I would have been able to save.

But the riders did leave, and I did crawl out of that sage patch, and I then found myself in another goddamn predicament. My horse was dead, and I had a stolen wad of twenty dollars in the saddlebags. I brushed myself down and looked towards the horizon. The moon was still high, and the dawn weren’t anywhere close to breaking. There was only one thing for it, I thought as I slung my saddlebags over my shoulders.

I had to start walking.

* * *

You’d think that this would be where my story ended. I wouldn’t blame you; there’s been many times so far that you’d think I would have given up, lain down on the cold ground and let myself be taken by the elements or some passing animal. But I’m nothing if not a stubborn bastard, and determined too.

So I walked.

I walked for what seemed like miles, my saddlebags rubbing my shoulders raw through my thin shirt, and hoped for sight of something. A river. A meadow. Hell, even a tundra, so long as it weren’t goddamn Sundance, Wyoming. I fell a few times, but I picked myself up and kept on going. I kept myself wary of people, and if I ever saw someone coming down the track that looked an inch like the law I kept my head down, didn’t speak to them – or, more often, took another route.

By the second day, I was getting desperate. I didn’t dare sleep, there was nothing to eat and the flask in my saddlebag had run out of water miles ago.

By the evening, I slept. But I was cursing Thomas Wagner’s name.

By the third day, I was cursing my _own_ name for being so dumb.

When the fourth day rolled around, I was close to collapse. This time, when a small group of horses and riders appeared over the crest of a hill I’d just climbed, I didn’t hide. I walked towards them, dragging my sorry carcass in the vague hope that they would know where the hell I was and they might have some water they wouldn’t mind sparing. I watched them pick their way through the brush, across the path, a band of four with a leader out front. They weren’t coming down my way; instead they were headed East, in the opposite direction.

I called out, my voice rasping and breaking as I did, “Hey! You! Stop!”

The riders stopped. One of them turned his horse around. Then they was coming towards me at a steady trot, all of them, and I was thanking my lucky stars that I’d happened upon them when I did. When the leader broke away from the group and started to lope his chestnut towards me, I stopped. I waited.

“Well, would you look who it is!”

All semblance of relief quickly fled from me. That voice… I knew that voice…

“If it ain’t that no good little piece o’ dirt Kirschtein!”

Oluo.

I turned to run, but I was too weak and too tired. I tripped over my own feet and lay there in the dust as Oluo gained on me, making sure his horse skidded to a halt inches from my body. “Lookee here boys!” he crowed. He hadn’t changed; he still had that nasty glint in his eye and a smile on his face that I weren’t all too happy about seeing. I struggled to sit up, and glared at him. “You all remember this lowlife, don’t you?” He spat at me, but managed to miss. He never was a good shot.

I scrambled backwards some more but Oluo just sighed and leapt off his horse with a flourish. “Come now, Kirschtein. Ain’t you happy to see me?”

“S-stay away from me,” I croaked.

“I don’t see you calling the shots right now, you slippery little bastard.” Oluo grabbed hold of my hair and pulled me to my feet, watched by his silent companions. I yowled like a cat and wriggled like one too, but Oluo gave a swift punch to my gut that stopped me doing much else. His lip curled. “You took my stallion from me.” He punched me again. “You stole from _me_.” A kick, as I was lying in the dust at his feet. “And look at you now, just as beat up and pathetic as the first time we met. Seems to be a habit of yours.”

I cracked open an eye to glare up at him, but then I noticed his eyes wander to the saddlebags. They’d fallen from my neck when I’d tripped. Immediately, this became far more dangerous. I couldn’t let him look in those saddlebags. If he looked – well, Oluo weren’t the brightest button in the box, but he’d be able to guess.

I fixed him with a hateful expression and hissed, “I see you’re still mean as the Devil, and ugly as him too.”

It did the job. Oluo gave me another kick in the guts, and another, but I took it with little more than a whimper. The other men had since caught up and were looking me over with a morbid kinda interest. I didn’t recognise any of ‘em enough to remember names, but I knew they worked for Oluo on the ranch. I might even have shared a bunkhouse with them once. But now all they did was watch as Oluo kicked the hell out of me, and didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

When Oluo eventually stopped for long enough for me to spit out a gobbet of blood, he made the unfortunate choice to glance over the saddlebags – and my heart sank.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here, then?”

“Nothin’”, I groaned, trying to move towards it. “None of your… _ugh…_ business…”

Oluo gave me another kick that sent tears to my eyes and picked up the saddlebags anyway. A kind of light came into his eyes, the kind that never meant nothing good. “What is this, I wonder…”

“Oluo, please,” I managed to croak, but he ignored me.

“Now I heard that there was a train robbery a few nights back,” he said, plucking out the money from the saddlebags, “and that the robbers got away clean. This is _quite_ the coincidence, ain’t it Kirschtein?”

I knew I couldn’t run. There weren’t no choice in the matter; if I tried, he’d catch me, and if I tried to fight in the state I was in he’d just kill me. So I just lay there, coughing up a lung in the acrid dust, until I was pulled to my feet and felt the familiar weight of irons being clapped around my wrists. I looked down at them, confusion clouding my anger for a moment.

“See, Kirschtein, I’ve been doing a little side job lately. Ranching cattle is one thing, but helping out the state Marshals for a pretty penny when they got better things to do – now that is where a man can truly make some money.” I said nothing as he pulled me over to his waiting horse, every bruise and cut protesting but the hatred turning putrid in me. “You ain’t worth much, Kirschtein, that much is true, but I just take pleasure in bringing you in. Always knew you were a rotten apple, down to the core. Now I get to see you swing – but not before you get yourself re-acquainted with all those friends you made back in Sundance jail, eh? Sure they’re all _dying_ to see you.”

I ain’t sure what did it. Whether it was the mocking of an ex employer, a man who’d tried to crush me into the dust and leave me there, or the threat of another single day in that jail. But sometimes a man’s gotta do what he gotta do. He reaches a limit, one that makes him stop and think about what he can do and what he _should_ do.

So I waited until Oluo was close enough to me, still bragging about bringing me into the Law. His face was so close to mine that I thought that he might bite like the viper he was. I waited a little longer. He grabbed his horse’s reins and jerked them, demanding it come closer. That was when I brought my hands up and smashed the handcuff irons into that mocking, smug face of his.

Oluo roared like a wounded animal and backed away, clutching his face like it was about to fall apart. Before the other hands could do much, I took a running jump and launched myself at Oluo’s chestnut. The mare shied away but I managed to get my body across the saddle before she spooked into a gallop.

Amid the shouts and cries from the hands, I swung my body upright and snatched for the trailing reins. But the mare was already in a full gallop, her ears flat back against her head and the ground flying under her. She was fast, faster than Chase had been, and though I couldn’t move my hands much thanks to the irons she didn’t need no encouraging. Thinking on it, I’d never seen her move faster than a lope – this was probably a run she’d needed for a long time.

Once I’d got settled I heard the telltale sound of hooves behind me. I turned in the saddle to see the three hands on my trail, and all of ‘em fumbling for their guns. I spurred the mare faster and headed for the brush, the sun beating down on me like a drum. The riders followed in hot pursuit, but their mounts slowed to navigate through the trickier grasses and sage. But Oluo’s mare just kept running. I tried to slow her, honest I did, but the bit was in her teeth and the devil was in her so’s there weren’t no way she was slowing. I wondered if she, too, had felt trapped – like a prisoner at the mercy of a cruel master. Maybe she wasn’t just running for me – she was running for herself, too.

A bullet whistled past my ear and the mare shied, leaping to the side and changing direction in a blink. I let her have her head, felt her stride lengthen even more so that she was racing her way across ground. The hands were holding back, but I knew they was waiting for the mare to tire. She would, eventually, and then they could catch us up. I hoped that, by the time the mare collapsed, the riders would be long gone. “C’mon girl,” I urged in her ear, “get yourself outta here.”

I kept myself flat against her neck when the firing started up again. We must have made quite a sight, churning up the dust in the middle of the desert with a small posse following behind. I took a route I remembered from the many rides I’d taken out with Rico, crossing a river and heading towards the cliff ranges and canyons. The harder the ground became, the more careful the mare’s gallop; so much so that the gap was starting to close between us and the riders. Now the bullets were too close, skipping like stones on a pond around us. And, to my horror, the mare was slowing.

It was at that moment, that hopeless moment, when I caught sight of a spotted coat. It was the Appaloosa stallion, the one I’d seen when I’d first got outta jail. It had to be the same stallion – there was no mistaking it. He had the same crested neck and barrel chest, not to mention the serene stillness that came with an animal that knew he weren’t to be bested. He was standing at the mouth of a canyon, so still that I wouldn’t have been sure he was real if his mane weren’t flying in the wind, and as I watched him he seemed to bow his head and back away into the canyon.

I thought quick. I knew that if the stallion could get through the canyon alright, then the mare would have no problem. So I drove my heels into her sides with a holler of encouragement and she surged into a full gallop once again, this time heading into the heart of the canyons and the pass I knew had to be hidden in there somewhere.

The cliffs loomed over us like giants, peering down at our little drama like they was ready to pass judgement on us all. To my surprise, the mare didn’t falter or slow at the change of direction; instead, she snatched the bit between her teeth and kept charging on. I turned to watch the riders, but was surprised to see them falling back. Their horses plunged and reared with how suddenly they’d been pulled from their gallop, but the riders were firm. They weren’t following. They were letting me go.

I let out a crow of triumph and let the mare gallop on, relief collapsing me against her neck as she ran. She kept on down the canyon like a trooper, her gallop becoming more relaxed like she knew herself that we was out of trouble. She certainly didn’t need no one digging in their heels or pulling at her mouth – she’d had enough of that.

I glanced down at the shackles around my wrists and let myself wonder how on earth I was to get the bastards off, when something made the mare jump. “Whoa!” I grabbed for the reins just before she skidded to a halt and went onto her back legs, her forelegs pawing the air with a guttural neigh of surprise. “Easy, easy,” I tried to soothe, but my bound hands made it hard to keep the reins and pat her at the same time. When she landed, snorting and shaking from head to toe, I caught a flurry of movement out the corner of my eye. Before I knew what was happening, a lasso sailed out of nowhere and fell around my middle. The mare bolted with a shrill whinny and I had no hope of staying on.

I fell to the ground heavy, and I was sure I heard a rib crack when I did. I didn’t cry out, or even curse. I just groaned, a low and losing sound deep in my stomach that weren’t manly nor strong. It was just plain _tired._ But I’d be damned if I was gonna go down without a fight. The bounty hunters would have their work cut out with me, that was for sure. Though my body protested, I writhed around on the floor with my cuffed hands pistoned to my sides and yelled. I cursed. I yelped at the pain. Because that was what they’d want me to do.

A chorus of triumphant yells rose up about me, and the rope around my body tightened. “I got one, I got one!” a voice cried gleefully.

“First one you got in weeks,” another said ruefully. “And he’s a wriggler.”

“Ain’t he just? Like a worm on a hook.”

I coughed as the canyon dust settled around me, and cracked my eye open for long enough to see that the mare hadn’t gotten far. Her reins had been snatched by a slight figure that I guessed was one of the hunters, and she was jerking her head around with pinned ears and a vicious expression on her face. I had to admit, I liked the spirit in her. She looked like she would rip the man’s hand off as soon as look at him.

I tried to move myself, but pain shot through me when I twisted my body just a little bit, and it was enough to keep me flat on the ground.

“He’s stopped wriggling,” one observed as they drew nearer to me.

“I figured that,” the other replied. “Maybe he’s dead.”

“He ain’t dead.”

“Only one way to find out.”

The man with the mare spoke up. “ _No,_ Reiner.”

I caught sight of two men, both talking amongst themselves and now watching me intently. Both were tall, but one was slender and dark with eyes like a viper’s and the other was broad and blonde. The blonde looked the type to punch before speaking, but the dark haired one looked like he’d rip my heart plain out. They both had their faces covered by bandanas, but I didn’t need to see their whole faces to know that Oluo’s riders had a damn good reason not to come to the canyon.

I managed, with a great deal of effort, to raise my head. “If you’re just gonna hand me over to the Marshal, can you just get on with it?”

“What you say?” the Heart-Ripper said. He was looking at me like I was a gabbling fool.

I made sure to look him in the eye, despite my fear. “I ain’t got a decent bounty on my head. Probably ain’t worth your time.”

The two looked at each other, thinking, but another voice came from behind me. “Oh, I dunno. I think it’s worth plenty.”

That voice. My eyes snapped open wide. With a grunt of effort, I turned myself over, wincing all the while from the shooting pain coming from my ribs.

There was a set of hooves dangerously near my head, hooves that were attached to the fine bones and sinew of an unmistakeable appaloosa horse, who was gazing at me through ice blue eyes and a degree of curiosity. I blinked at it. It blinked right back. When I let my eyes travel up further I saw that the man who’d spoken was now leaning over to look me over. His brows were furrowed in concern, his nose a little wrinkled with it too. He had a bandana knotted about his neck, but he wasn’t bothering to hide his face. There weren’t no point. I would’a known who he was. Perhaps he knew that. He folded his arms over his saddle horn and blew a chunk of black hair free of his face. The freckles seemed lighter, almost invisible in this cooler season.

I let my head drop back onto the dusty earth and groaned. “God fucking _damnit._ ”

Marco Bodt had the decency to laugh. “Well that ain’t a greeting I’m familiar with.” He tilted his head to one side as he considered me. “It really is you, Songbird. Seems our paths are fated to cross, one way or another.”

I groaned still louder. “Shit, just shoot me now why don’t you?”

Marco smiled. “Aw c’mon, it ain’t all that bad.”

I glared up at him. “A gun. Between my eyes. Right now.”

“Not today, kid.” Marco’s eyes flickered away from me and landed, no doubt, on the men who stood behind me. The smile faded. “Ymir. Reiner. Bring him. And Eren, take his horse.”

The two bandits I could see shared a look. “What if he tries to run?” The blonde asked.

Marco hesitated. Then he answered, in a voice that seemed saddened to say it, “He won’t. He ain’t got nowhere to go.”

He turned his horse away and headed for a split in the canyon ahead. As he left me to the three bandits’ mercies, I realised how right he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final A/N: as you know, this is very loosely based around the life of Harry Longabaugh aka the Sundance Kid, and I can tell you that the frankly stupid bank robbery is 100% taken from the account of Sundance's life, and he did also smash his handcuffed wrists into the face of a Deputy sheriff who tried to arrest him. He apparently had, according to one bit of research, "an aversion to handcuffs", which I think suits Jean pretty well too.  
> The rest of it (or most of it) is just artistic license.

**Author's Note:**

> btw if you don't know I'm very PAINFULLY British so this narrative voice is new for me(and first person too waaah); any pointers would be appreciated!


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